


Holding Out for a Hero

by fancylances



Series: Greatest Hits [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Stephen Strange, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, M/M, Mind Control, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stephen Strange Unofficial Avengers Therapist, Tony Stark hates space, not a songfic but it's the Guardians so of course there's music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-07-18 20:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 47,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancylances/pseuds/fancylances
Summary: Thor is missing. With the threat of planar instability hanging over their heads, the Guardians' only hope of finding him may rest in the hands of Stephen Strange.





	1. strange arrivals

“FRIDAY, play something loud.”

The thumping bass rumbled through the Sanctum, shaking the glass of the artifact cases. Tony held a hand on the Vase of Ten Thousand Souls to keep it from tipping off the shelf, nodding his head to the foundation-crumbling beat.

“Is this loud enough, Boss?” FRIDAY asked, barely audible over the opening lyrics to “Hollaback Girl”.

“ _Tony!_ ” Stephen’s irritated cry boomed down the hall, magically enhanced in attempts to drown out the music.

Tony grinned, hiked his thumb into the air. “Pump it up.”

By the time Stephen arrived in the artifact room—Tony’s new workspace, ‘his’ armchair front and center by the new desk and full setup of monitors and consoles—the music was crowding out almost all of his thoughts. And Tony was loving it, bouncing in place to the beat, scribbling notes on his holographic workstation between throwing bright, not-so-clandestine glances at the approaching incensed sorcerer.

“Oh, hey!” Tony called, as if Stephen’s arrival was unexpected.

“What the hell is this?” Stephen shouted, pointing harshly up at the ceiling.

“Gwen Stefani,” Tony replied matter-of-factly, smirking over his notes.

“You know what I mean!” Stephen pressed in, accusatory finger still raised. “I’m working on a fickle series of spells, and this _really_ isn’t conducive!”

“You’ve been working for _days_ ,” Tony sighed, leaning into the words and trying to sidle in close. Stephen, features pinched in sleep-deprived irritation, shuffled backwards away from the approach. “Loosen up, settle down, it’s the weekend!”

To prove his point, Tony clapped his hands in time, shimmied another step closer.

“You don’t even like this song!” Stephen shouted, gesticulating angrily.

“C’mon, you know all the words!” Tony bounced on his toes, fingers beckoning Stephen in. “Tell me how to spell ‘bananas’, Steph!”

“FRIDAY,” Stephen said, taking it to the higher authority, fists balled at his side, “turn it _down_! Please,” he added, squinting at the way Tony threw his head back and laughed.

“No can do, I’m afraid,” FRIDAY said over Miss Stefani’s crooning. “Not without your proper authorization.”

Stephen practically slammed his face into his hand, irritation physically radiating off of him.

“You heard the lady,” Tony laughed, grin barely contained by his face.

“This is _Doctor Handsome_ ,” Stephen managed through tightly-clamped teeth. “Would you _please_ turn it down so I can work, FRIDAY?”

“Acknowledged, Doctor Handsome,” the AI replied, ratcheting the volume down to tolerable levels.

A hard breath rattled out of Stephen, and he ran a heavy hand down the length of his face before he fixed Tony with a weary look. The silly grin dropped off Tony’s face by degrees, slowly but surely. He swallowed that giddiness with some difficulty, nodded a bit tightly, and hung his head as he took a safe step backward.

“Thank you, FRIDAY,” Stephen grumbled, and he made a motion to turn.

“Hey, Stephen, come on,” Tony butted back in. “Seriously, I think it’s been days. You’re the one who told me what happens to a body without sleep.”

“And _that_ was how you tried to help?” Stephen growled, barely turning to find Tony in his periphery. “This is a matter of planar stability, my sleep cycle can wait.”

“Then let me help!” Tony pressed on, following in Stephen’s determined footsteps. “I’ve been practicing, and four hands are better than—”

“No,” Stephen cut him off sharply, voice too loud again, enough to stop Tony in his tracks.

And Stephen stopped his mad charge in the middle of the hall, realizing that he’d spoken too sharply, too harshly; even Tony Stark had stopped rambling. Stephen’s next breath echoed with arcane weight (energy sloughing off him like he’d shaken off a layer of snow, of ash).

“Sorry,” he said, not quite as strong.

“I…” Tony started, slowly circled to take his place right in front of the sorcerer. “Yeah. I’m sorry, too.” He stood on his toes to press a kiss high on Stephen’s cheek. “Tea. You and me, come on. Can the universe wait three to five minutes for steeping?”

Stephen’s frame sagged, as if the lack of sleep were suddenly catching up with him. “Tones—”

“Hey,” Tony cut back in, smoothing Stephen’s hair back and away from his face. “I’m trying to do the _good boyfriend_ thing.” And he took Stephen’s face in both of his hands, looking up at him with a sad concern that didn’t look at home on Tony Stark’s brilliant face.

Stephen couldn’t ignore that look for long. His weariness melted slowly into an easy, familiar smirk (closed his eyes and leaned into one of Tony’s hands, just slightly). “You really need to work on ways to get my attention.”

Tony’s joyful disposition was back almost instantly, bringing his grin with it. He poked Stephen once in the chest, winking as he took a series of bounding backwards steps toward the stairs. “It worked, though.”

“What the hell was that?” Wanda asked, head poking out of her doorway as they passed.

“Gwen Stefani,” both Stephen and Tony answered.

Two minutes into steeping the tea, Stephen’s head lolled onto Tony’s shoulder, already asleep.

Wanda blew the steam gently off the top of her mug, smirking down at the two of them on the sofa. Tony had barely moved after an entire hour, a new feat, effectively trapped by Stephen. He looked up when she entered the sitting room, managed to smirk and give her the smallest wave.

“Good,” she said unbidden, but softly, with a nod at Stephen’s lank form. “I feel like he’s been up for days.”

Tony smirk fondly at the top of Stephen’s head, somehow restrained himself from running fingers through that hair. “Yeah.” He managed to tear his eyes away long enough to keep talking. “D’you know what he means by _planar instability_?” he asked, barely louder than a whisper.

Wanda shook her head, took the seat opposite them. “He hasn’t said anything about it to me. There’s been a lot of… _chanting_ involved, that I could hear.”

“Huh,” Tony murmured, holding his mouth carefully at Stephen’s brow. Stilled his voice when Stephen stirred on his shoulder and waited until he settled again. “It sounds big. Whatever it is, it’s kicking his ass. He’s never like this.”

Wanda’s little smile slowly dissipated, and she nodded. “He’s told me about ‘big magic’ once or twice, but never really elaborated. I can get the gist, though, from the name. Bigger than the spells he’s taught us. Difficult even for him.”

Tony’s face scrunched into a disbelieving pucker. Difficult for _his_ sorcerer? Wanda seemed to understand the expression, and she smiled fondly. In reply, Tony cleared his throat as unobtrusively as he could, did a very bad job of hiding a blush at being so readable. 

“Hey, Levi,” Tony said to put an end to the moment, calling quietly to the cloak that had gone dormant on Stephen’s shoulders. Its collar popped up interestedly, and Tony held a finger to his lips (as if keeping the cloak quiet was imperative). “Can you shift him up? The bed’s way more—”

His words stopped in their tracks, and he pulled out his ringing phone almost before he’d registered that it was ringing. Tony checked the display— _Honeybear_.

“Rhodey?” Tony asked, very quietly still. 

“Hey, Tony,” the voice on the other end came through—more thin and anxious than usual. And, despite his efforts to keep everything quiet, Tony felt Stephen stirring awake on his shoulder. “I know it’s early still, but this is…”

“You let me fall asleep?” Stephen murmured, his brows furrowing but with all previous annoyance and anger fled from his tone.

“I didn’t _let_ you do anything, you passed out,” Tony replied. “Sorry,” he said into the phone again, “you still got me. What’s up? Cap fry another circuit at the Compound trying to get the Dodgers game on?”

Stephen didn’t speak to interrupt the call, but he mouthed the word “Rhodes” with a questioning nod. Tony nodded back; pointed to Stephen then back up the stairs, the _go back to sleep_ implicit in his motions.

“No, it’s a little weirder than that,” Rhodey replied. “A spaceship just landed on the front lawn.”

Tony and Stephen sat fully straight up, Wanda on the edge of her seat across from them. The last time any spaceships had come to Earth, they had brought Thanos’ emissaries and an army of ravenous space dogs. But while there was an edge to Rhodey’s voice, there was no terror or other indication that he or anyone else was in immediate danger.

“You’re calling, so they must not hostile,” Stephen muttered.

“Define hostile,” Rhodey all but laughed. “It’s Peter Quill and his bunch of space weirdos.”

The momentary anxiety left them like air from a balloon. “Quill?” Tony scoffed. “What the hell is _he_ doing here? I told him to keep his ass in space until he found a way to get rid of the stones.”

“I don’t know,” Rhodey sighed, and finally added: “All I know is he said he wants to talk to _you_ , Stephen.”

Something caught in Stephen’s chest, something hard and sharp, cutting up his insides with sudden trepidation. He took a breath to smooth it down, but it proved stubbornly resilient. He placed a hand on his chest to will it away, but he knew precisely why it struck him as hard as it did. His eyes flicked up to take in the new, worried look that had buckled up on Tony’s face, seeing whatever change had come over Stephen in that moment. 

“Planar instability,” Stephen breathed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “This has to be related to the shift in planar energy I’ve…” He stood, brushed off any remnants of sleep with a businesslike nod. “Wanda, I need you to stay here.”

She stood to match him, worrying her hands only once before she dropped them back to her side, filled that space with a sharp nod. “Protect the Sanctum, got it,” she said firmly.

“Not me?” Tony asked as he stood to make three, though his slithering smirk seemed to indicate why Stephen hadn’t asked him to stay behind.

“I know you get along with Quill like a tire fire,” Stephen sighed, “but I need an interpreter.”

“Am I the only one that gets your wizard-babble?” Tony asked, grinning affectionately.

“Yes,” Stephen answered truthfully, unable to hide the answering (loving) smile that came unbidden to his mouth.

“So,” they heard Rhodey’s drawn-out voice over the line, still hanging on the air. “You’re coming?”

Tony barely contained a laugh, hid it by clearing his throat. “Yeah, on our way. Don’t let them touch _anything_.”

“Oh, boy,” they heard Rhodey sigh just before the call ended.

+++

They stepped through the portal directly onto the front lawn of the Avengers Compound, and almost into the side of a spaceship. Tony danced a step backward, one foot back in the Sanctum, in shock—tried to smooth it over by gliding under one of the arrays sticking out at them as if nothing had happened (completely missing the little smile Stephen left at his back).

The scene that met them as they rounded the side of the ship was uncharacteristically melancholy. Of Quill’s assorted crew, only three of them were visible: Quill himself, Mantis, and Nebula. Standing front and center representing the Compound was (of course) Steve Rogers, arms folded; he looked up sharply as the two of them arrived, a relieved smile wandering onto his face. Rhodey and Natasha stood slightly behind him, and Bruce hung by the open door of the Compound, his face buckled with worry, eyes searching for something.

“Hey,” Tony called, bringing all attention to the two of them. He pointed sharply at the ship. “This is an unloading zone only, you gotta move this hunk of junk.”

“Real funny, Stark,” Quill shot back, lip curling in distaste. “Look at this guy,” he added, elbowing Mantis at his side. “Joking in a serious situation like this.”

“Hey, Mantis,” Tony said, waving at her (followed by her happy wave in return). “Nebula.” She nodded once. “Oh hey, Quill’s here too.”

“We didn’t ask for the walking commentary,” Quill bit back (and now even Tony must have noticed the change in Quill’s normally quirky attitude—he was downright subdued, maybe even angry). “Wait, what the heck were _you_ doing at Wizard Central Station, Stark? Are you, like, his sidekick now?” he asked, eyeing them both suspiciously.

“Uh,” Tony blinked awkwardly into the silence, glancing at the gathered Avengers. “No one filled you in?” He pointed from the middle of his chest to somewhere vaguely in Stephen’s direction several times. “We’re a thing. We’re dating.”

Quill’s reaction was slow, but telling. His face scrunched into confusion first, then his lip pulled up in a mask of disgust. 

“ _Ew_ ,” was all he said at first. 

Tony and Stephen exchanged a quick, worried little glance (backed up by the protective straightening of every spine at the Compound, and Stephen’s heart thundered in his chest when he saw).

And then Quill turned his sights on Stephen, pointing harshly in Tony’s direction.

“Seriously? _That_ guy?” Quill shook his head, crossed his arms and looked Stephen over. “You can do better, dude.”

It took everyone by surprise when Stephen broke into a bright laugh (Natasha and Bruce locking eyes in a way that said they’d never seen something so unprecedented). Mantis’ antennae perked up, somewhere between confused and elated. If Stephen thought Nebula capable of a smirk, there might have been one on her face, then.

“I don’t think I could,” Stephen told Quill, barely fighting past his smile. Most definitely didn’t want to meet Tony’s eyes at that moment, based on the fact he could feel the sunshine in Tony’s eyes on him without even turning.

Tony took in a sharp breath and clapped his hands together to end the moment before anything more embarrassing could happen. “Quill, where’s the rest of your traveling circus?” he asked, taking a look about as if they might manifest on command.

Quill’s shoulders seemed to settle, and for once he didn’t look like an overgrown child. The only other time Stephen had seen him so serious was on Titan—as Mantis turned to ash in his arms; as Thanos lay dying at his feet. The smile dropped off Tony’s face to match.

“Actually, that’s why we’re here. What’s left of us,” Quill said, frowning. “Something happened.”

“Thor is missing,” Mantis said for him, her antennae glowing as she laid a hand on his arm. 

“And Rocket, Groot, and Drax with him,” Quill added as his frown pinched even tighter.

“With Thor gone, we knew that Strange was the only one of you who could get them back,” Nebula said, her black eyes on Quill (if Stephen didn’t know her better, he’d say that she was worried about him).

All eyes migrated slowly to fix on Stephen, like a series of spotlights; hot and bright and intense. Stephen didn’t falter under them. Acknowledged the attention, nodded once.

“Understandable that you needed help. But you had the entire galaxy to choose from. Why me specifically?” Stephen asked, knowing the answer despite it.

Quill tried to look disinterested, which didn’t work for more than a few seconds. He dropped it just as quickly, and he sighed with his entire body. “‘Cause you’re the only magic guy I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this coalesced waaay faster than I thought it would. A NEW STORY! Intrigue! Magic! Space! Music!
> 
> And yes, it's a fic featuring the Guardians, so there's definitely going to be some music. And there's going to be a playlist for all the music "featured" in the fic. I'll probably end up posting on my tumblr (shoelessone), and perhaps here upon request!


	2. package deal

Wanda stepped aside, eyes wide behind the scarlet runes of her shield as Stephen and Tony reappeared in the Sanctum, half of the Guardians in tow.

“You remember Wanda Maximoff?” Stephen asked over his shoulder (sighing inwardly at the piercing, questioning, unanswered stare that Wanda fixed him with).

“Yeah, you were there when we all got yanked out of the soul stone,” Quill mentioned, turning to keep her in his gaze as they walked by. “Right? I’m not remembering something else?”

“Right,” Wanda said, her face a stew of confusion. “Stephen?” She managed to catch up to him on the stairs, fighting to keep his eyes on her instead of the floor. “What’s going on?”

“Thor’s missing,” Stephen supplied. “We’re about to get the details, if you want to sit in.”

“How do you lose a god, Quill?” Wanda asked, shooting a hard glance over her shoulder.

“I didn’t _lose_ him!” Quill snapped back, lip curling. “What is he, my brother? He did this to himself! _And_ ,” he pressed as they rounded the top of the stairs and into Tony’s workspace (surrounded by artifacts in glass, a clash of cultures that seemed to describe Stephen and Tony to a tee without saying a word), “he took half my crew with him. So I’d say it’s more like he ran away than I lost him. Blameless.”

“Okay, you’re getting ahead of the story,” Tony cut him off, gesturing the Guardians into the artifact room. Mantis lingered for some time by an ancient mask, her wide eyes reflecting back at her. “Sit,” Tony commanded to Quill, motioned to one of the many chairs that dotted the walls.

Quill looked briefly at Stephen, to which Tony cut back in: “Hey, space cadet! I don’t need permission, I live here. Sit down and tell me what happened to my personal Tesla coil. Thor,” he amended, seeing the look of utter, blank confusion in Quill’s eyes. “Sit. Talk. Good boy.”

“You can _totally_ do better, Strange,” Quill growled, eyeing Stephen sideways.

“Play nice with the other kids, Tony,” Stephen said, just under his breath, a smirk pulling at one edge of his mouth.

“Back off, old man, you’re not my dad,” Tony bit back in, the edge of his snark as vicious as his grin (paired with Stephen’s tight, barely-contained laughter).

“This is gross,” Quill interrupted, both hands up as if trying to separate them. “Can you not flirt in front of Mantis, please? We’ve got serious issues—”

“Obviously,” Tony mumbled.

“—and the longer we stand here, the longer they’re out there…” Quill rubbed both of his hands over his face, as if instilling himself with a charge, and dropped them harshly away. “I’m their _captain_ , Stark. And I just let ‘em…”

The playfulness drained off of Tony’s face, and for a moment, Stephen felt like they were back on Titan—the first time. They’d just met Quill and his ragtag crew (barely managed to avoid killing each other). Stephen had seen the strength of their friendship even before he’d plunged his consciousness through millions of possible timelines—watched them die together over and over; watched Quill throw himself in front of a blow meant to kill Mantis, saw Nebula set her vengeance aside to pull Quill out of the way of a rain of boulders from the sky. Their tentative bravery, their foolhardiness, their obvious love for each other. And Tony must have remembered, too, even if it _was_ just the one timeline, for him.

“Okay,” Tony said, much more calm and controlled. “Sorry. Go ahead, Quill.”

All of them sat, including Stephen—the cloak pooling under him like a chair to help suspend himself in midair.

“Showoff,” Wanda murmured, allowing a small smile.

Between the three of them, the Guardians (what remained of them) told the story of how they’d managed to split themselves up. Mantis had picked up a particularly strange energy signature on a routine sweep of the system they were entering. Strange enough for even the Guardians to take notice.

Thor in particular had been on edge, Nebula said. 

“The readings indicated the anomaly had the same basic energy signature as a black hole,” Nebula said, her arms crossed as she fixed Stephen with a steady, almost unblinking gaze. “But there was a visual confirmation.”

“The space was acting like a black hole,” Tony supplied, fingers tapping his chin in thought, “but you could _see_ it?”

“You can’t see black holes?” Wanda asked, turning her head just slightly to Tony.

“Not unless it’s sucking in something massive, like a nearby star,” he told her. “There’s no way light can reflect out of a black hole, it’s literally the massively-compacted gravity of a collapsed star and everything else it can get its hands on.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Stephen posited vaguely.

“Sounded fishy,” Quill corrected him. “We don’t just go around kicking ass and saving the galaxy. When we’re on a job, we make sure we finish it.”

He cleared his throat over Mantis’ confused objections.

“And getting any info we could on the stones was one of those jobs,” Quill barreled through. “This seemed weirder than our usual shit, so we sent out the pod to get some up close readings on it.”

“So you lobbed most of your crew at what might’ve been a black hole?” Tony asked (fingers pinching irritatedly at the space between his eyebrows). “Why the hell did you need _Drax_ to take a couple readings?”

“That’s not the point,” Quill barrelled on. “The point is, Thor just started wigging out.”

“The pod veered off course,” Nebula supplied, her voice dark but even, “going right for the edge of the anomaly. And then the pod vanished, and all communication was cut off.”

Stephen let a moment of silence hang unanswered in the air, just long enough to gather a handful of thoughts. “What did the anomaly look like?” he asked first.

“Shimmering,” was all Mantis managed at first, and she scrunched her face in thought. “Almost like your portals, Doctor Strange. But with nothing on the other side but darkness.”

“Which is _why_ ,” Quill came back in, motioning literally to bring everything full circle, “I thought of the only other guy I know who can do weird magic.”

Stephen nodded slightly, tapped his fingertips together. “You were so sure that this anomaly was some form of sorcery that you didn’t bother with any other forms of rescue? You turned around and came right to Earth?”

Mantis shook her head, despite Quill miming the _cut-it-out_ motion over his throat frantically. “No, he stopped to pick up snacks.”

Quill planted his face in his hand, nearly as red as his jacket.

Stephen opened his mouth, closed it again, and after gathering his voice against a stormcloud of disbelief he said, absolutely deadpan: “ _Snacks_.” Took another long breath (clearly bolstered by the way Tony was desperately holding back his laughter) and bit back in, somehow even more dry. “You put the fate of your friends on the line to pick up _snacks_.”

Nebula smirked, just slightly. “I like you, Strange.” Before the appreciative look Stephen found climbing into his eyes took hold, she continued. “Before Thor cut the feed to the pod, or the interference cut it off for him, he said that he heard something.” Her fingers tapped on the arm of her chair. “Something like voices.”

“Hundreds of them, he said,” Mantis added, her big eyes filled with apprehension. 

“He said he finally found the Asgardians,” Quill finished, looking utterly dissatisfied.

“What? That’s great!” Tony tried, looking from face to face with a hopeful sort of look. “They’ve been lost since Thanos blew his ship to bits.”

“Except it wasn’t,” Quill said, shook his head. “We didn’t hear anything through our coms on the ship, even on any of the nearby channels.”

“So, what, the other possibility is that he actually drove the pod into a black hole?” Tony asked, his eyebrows pressing down hard on his forehead. His voice had gone terribly thin, and he only blinked away the feverish eye contact with Quill when Stephen slipped his fingers comfortingly together with Tony’s. “Are you telling me one of my friends just compacted himself into the size of an atom because he thought he heard voices?”

“It’s not a black hole,” Stephen murmured, just loud enough to turn their heads to him. “I’m not saying that Thor doesn’t need our help, but I think it’s probably safe to say he hasn’t been crushed into a singularity. You’re right, Quill, I don’t think this is anything any of you have encountered before.”

“What, but you have?” Tony asked, shifting his position to align himself with the Guardians. Relief hadn’t quite spread through his limbs, but the frantic look that had come into his eyes had mellowed, even if just slightly.

Stephen nodded, held the hand that wasn’t locked with Tony’s at his mouth in thought for just a moment. “In the same book I found the sealing wards I’ve been willing into existence for the past three days.” He hardly had to make a move to summon the book itself into his hands (Mantis jumped, but only slightly) and wave it open. The runes in gold inlay on the cover were immediately obvious, enough to jar Tony into an outright jolt.

“Asgardian?” he asked, eyes flashing to Stephen (accusingly?).

“I was going to tell you when I got it working,” Stephen answered the unasked question (and had it been from anyone else’s mouth, it might have sounded sheepish). The diagram that he opened to was a detailed depiction of Yggdrasil, surrounded in its branches by the other realms of existence. “Tony, you were on Earth for the Convergence a few years ago, so you’ll remember what happened in London.”

“Yeah,” Tony grumbled, settling into his seat with arms folded, “and I’m still a little pissed off I didn’t get a call to help out. Where were you, by the way?”

Stephen opened his mouth, and the confidence dropped off his face like it had been slapped off. 

“I… was speaking at a conference. In Chicago. It was before—” All of this. Before the magic and the Avengers and Tony Stark were in his life. Published neurosurgeon with almost more money than he knew what to do with; more ego than he probably deserved. Not quite cruel, but neither had he ever really been what could be considered charitable. A doctor for his sake, and no one else’s.

If he had been able to somehow go back and tell himself then that he was ‘just’ a neurosurgeon—that he was capable of so much more, he could be so much _better_ —he would have laughed in his own face (probably would have told himself to stick his comment somewhere unpleasant, and go change because, frankly, _how embarrassing_ ). 

Stephen hadn’t thought about the man that he used to be in a very long time. It didn’t sit well in his stomach.

“Hey, sweetheart, you with me?” he heard Tony ask, and Stephen felt warm fingers curl around his wrist.

Stephen caught Tony’s worried eyes, and then he shook the memories off, like a bad dream. “I think you would have hated me, back then.” Fished out a little smirk.

“To be fair, I kinda hated you to begin with,” Tony added, and he filled the distance between them with the hard light of affection.

“I hate _both of you_ right now,” Quill cut in. He snapped his fingers, trying to hurry the conversation along. “What were you even talking about, Strange? Convergence?”

“Right,” Stephen snapped out of it, coming back to the book open in front of him. “The planes of existence that the Asgardians call the Nine Realms came into resonance and then Convergence several years ago over London, and were nearly destroyed in the process. From my research, and with Wong’s help, I found out that the same resonance applied to the walls between _other_ dimensions, other planes of existence outside of the nine that appeared over London that day. The legends in this book say that this phenomena only aligns with Midgard—with Earth—every five thousand years. But I’ve felt a resonance growing over the last month that could indicate something similar, on a smaller scale. An alignment of planes outside of our own, running close enough to make the walls thin enough for even someone like you to pass through.”

“You said five thousand years,” Nebula said thinly.

Stephen nodded. “I did. But I also said that there was a _new_ resonance in the planes, so strong that I can feel it from Earth. Which is why I think I can safely say that whatever Thor drove your pod into _wasn’t_ a black hole. At least, not a natural one.”

“An artificial black hole?” Quill asked, his brows pressing hard down his forehead.

“An artificial Convergence,” Stephen answered. “I couldn’t be sure until I see it for myself, but—”

“Great,” Quill cut in, shoved himself out of his seat and motioned for Stephen to follow, which he did. “Let’s go, it’s a few good jumps out from Earth so the sooner we—”

“Wait, wait,” Tony tried to get a word in, and he stood to match (several inches shorter than Quill and trying his best to not look it). “Now?”

“Unless you want to leave Thor and the others to whatever created the anomaly,” Nebula murmured.

“What, so, Quill’s got the munchies and it’s fine, but _talking it over_ is gonna take too long?” Tony pressed. 

“What’d I tell you about plans, Stark?” Quill asked, trying his best to look cocky (it barely fit his boyish face, and certainly not his unsure stance).

“Can I talk to the wizard for ten seconds?” Tony insisted, and before the Guardians could spirit his boyfriend away, Tony took Stephen by the hand and pulled him down the hall—just far enough away from the artifact room to be out of earshot, but not enough to leave the Guardians to their own devices in the Sanctum.

“I _was_ going to tell you about the wards,” Stephen began somewhat dejectedly.

“That’s not—” Tony began, steadied himself, and started again. “Look, I thought we talked about this.” He moved in until he took up the space in front of Stephen—hands careful but firm on Stephen’s shoulders. “You don’t get into trouble without me. Don’t go in alone, don’t do anything stupid without backup.”

“Why, because that’s _your_ job?” Stephen asked, the smile on his mouth almost tentative, hesitant. He took another breath, began again before Tony could get his mouth going. “I know you’re coming with me, I thought it was a given. Who knows what would happen to the Sanctum if I left you in charge?”

“You know I’m attracted to your sarcasm,” Tony said sarcastically. And, after the shortest moment, he sighed—took the collar of Stephen’s tunic in both of his hands and hung on like a drowning man; looked searchingly up into Stephen’s eyes and said nothing for a record eight seconds.

Tony’s mouth was trembling when he pulled Stephen against him, like he was trying to stop his own shaking with a firm kiss. Insistent, but tentative—Stephen could feel Tony’s flighty, worried heartbeat through that kiss. Enough that he pulled away, pinned Tony with his eyes (warm concern flooding out of him, through the fingers he used to hold Tony’s face, make him stay still and look at him).

“Tones,” Stephen said quietly, brows bent with worry. Running a thumb again and again over the space just under Tony’s ear, searching his face. Took a small, sharp breath when he realized exactly what was twisting Tony’s face with sudden anxiety. “Right.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed _hard_ through the word, like it had physically punched him in the gut. 

“You don’t—”

“I’m not letting you disappear, Stephen.” His tone was thin, sharp, but not harsh. When he opened his mouth to continue, some of that anxiety had leaked out of him; his cadence was nearly normal. “Not on the Good Ship Lollipop, anyway.”

Stephen’s mouth fixed into a hard, thoughtful line. He knew just how many times Tony had clambered awake beside him, breathing too hard and too fast—eyes far away and glassy, practically reflecting the bleak, hopeless void of space opening up around him through the portal over New York. The dead silence over the suit coms, his power slowly shutting down, falling and watching the stars wheel endlessly overhead. Just looking at him now, Stephen could see the soulless expanse of space through the viewport of the ship they’d taken to Titan written all through Tony’s nerves, his stance, the way he pressed his lips together to keep them from shaking.

All the same, he knew Tony well enough by now. Knew he’d come anyway, _especially_ if Stephen told him not to. So, instead, Stephen tipped Tony’s head up by the chin, leaned in to hold a kiss to his brow—steady, reaffirming.

“I’m with you,” Stephen said, quiet and close. “Promise.”

Tony let out a long, trembling breath (fingers flighty on the nape of Stephen’s neck, barely a suggestion of an anchor to keep them together). “I know.” 

And, fifteen seconds later, Tony was back. He literally shook off the strange tension in his chest, fingers still lingering in the hair at the back of Stephen’s neck. “You think Quill’s right? Magic?”

“If it is, I should be there,” Stephen sighed. “But if it’s not, it’s good that you’re coming, too.”

“Oh, so I _am_ useful for something,” Tony snarked.

“You’re useful for a lot of things,” Stephen said, low and soft. Before that could sink in, he pushed through with: “Do you need to adjust the range on your scanners in the suit?”

“Way ahead of you, baby,” Tony answered. He tapped at his temple. “In my head, anyway. There’s a couple things I can throw in a suitcase with the toothbrushes. Why, you think Quill’s ship’s scanners missed something?”

“I’d rather put my faith in Stark tech than whatever Quill has cobbled together on his ship,” Stephen answered.

Tony fixed him with an absolutely impish grin. “Oh my god, I just got the _best_ idea.” He tapped knowingly at Stephen’s chest, just once, and spun back toward the artifact room. 

Once Tony had peeled away, Quill cleared his throat, announcing his presence—and the likelihood that he’d been standing there for some time. Stephen turned, slow but not angry (How could he be angry? The number of times he’d seen himself kissing Tony on the front page of some magazine was staggering by now; so much so that when some other story made the cover he was almost offended). He didn’t say anything, which brought an awkward fumbling to Quill’s face.

“So, uh, you and Stark,” Quill murmured, punching one fist absently into the palm of his opposite hand and not quite making eye contact. “How long’s _that_ weirdness been happening?”

Stephen barely had to think. “Five days after you left Earth. That would make it five months and nearly two weeks.”

“I thought he had a girlfriend, or something,” Quill mentioned as offhandedly as Quill could probably muster.

Stephen’s mouth hung open for one affronted moment before he managed to regain control. “He did. He was engaged, actually.” He turned, square to Quill—back straight and arms crossed. It wasn’t as easy as looking down his nose at Tony, Quill was as tall as he was. “How long is the journey to the anomaly?”

“Uh,” Quill began, thrown by the sudden change in direction. “Twenty jumps or so—”

“Depending on whether you stop for snacks,” Stephen interrupted drolly.

“Okay, I get it,” Quill grumbled. “Why? Got somewhere else to be?”

“No, I don’t,” Stephen said, taking the few steps necessary to bring himself into proximity. Somehow, even at the same height, he managed to glower down at Quill, voice darker. “Not today. Tony and I are coming with you to study the nature of your anomaly and hopefully rescue your crew. If you have some kind problem with Tony and myself, I suggest you either find some other sorcerer to follow you blindly into the depths of space—or you can _get over it_ , Quill.”

“Woah, woah,” Quill held up a hand to stop Stephen’s intimidating advance. “Chill out, man. I don’t have a beef with who wants to shack-up with whoever or _what_ ever. I have seen some _shit_ , Strange. But Stark?”

One of Stephen’s eyebrows quirked up, but he didn’t say anything.

“He’s a total jerkoff!” Quill concluded, swinging an arm in the direction Tony had gone. “And you’re…”

“Not?” Stephen prompted at the pause.

“As much,” Quill corrected with something like a shrug. “Look, I asked for your help and I’m getting Stark along for the ride. I’m not happy, but if you’re a package deal, that’s fine. I need—” He cut himself off, looked up and away with a squirming, disappointed look all over his face. “I need to get ‘em back.”

Stephen nodded slowly, and when he laid a hand on Quill’s shoulder, the other man jumped from the contact like Stephen had been a live wire. But he didn’t back off, just examined the movement with a wary, somewhat confused expression.

“You came to the right jerkoffs, then,” Stephen assured him. And, thankfully, Quill burst into tight laughter.

“Hey Quill,” Tony said, not quite breathless on his return as he came up between them. “You’ve got an audio jack adapter in your tin can ship, right?” He had a large duffel bag in one hand, and was lightly tossing something the size of a USB stick in the other.

“Why?” Quill asked, brows crumpling like a bad car accident.

“I heard you’re a music junkie. You probably don’t get a lot of music from Earth while you’re floating around up there, so I thought I’d scrape together some new tunes for you.” He pressed the device, whatever it was, into one of Quill’s hands and flicked a thumbs-up at him—clapped him hard on the other shoulder. “Are we hitting the road, or what?”

And as he turned away from Quill, Tony hit Stephen with the broadest, most obvious wink he had ever seen in his life.

As Quill turned the device over, a little half smirk on his face when he murmured an appreciative “huh”, Stephen rolled his eyes and held back a laugh. 

Stephen conjured a portal behind Quill, waved a hand at the ship through it. “I’ll be right behind you. I need to…”

Tony nodded, didn’t need to be told twice. “C’mon, Quill,” he called over his shoulder as he hopped through. “And bring the kids!”

The burn in Nebula’s eyes was almost tangible, but she and Mantis moved through after them anyway.

When Stephen turned, she was already waiting for him. His shoulders dropped, inspecting Wanda’s tense stance, the way her fingers tapped idly together, the sad tilt of her brow.

“Back to space?” she asked in what attempted to be a jocular tone.

He nodded, approaching her. “The Sanctum is yours until I get back. I don’t anticipate any world-ending crises,” he said casually, barely smiling at the grin that broke over her nervous face. “Any fluctuations in cosmic energy have all been pointing to whatever resonance I’ve been sensing—with any luck, we’ll have it taken care of before we get back.”

“So there aren’t any demons I should be keeping an eye out for?” she asked slyly.

Stephen shook his head, ran a hand over his eyes as he thought. “No. But you need to keep practicing your meditation—”

“Every day at three,” she repeated for what sounded like the thousandth time.

“And you know how to contact Wong if anything goes—”

“Stephen,” she laughed, a sigh smoothing the worry from her face. “I’m not a child.”

“I know,” he answered in a hard exhale. Took only another second before he pulled her into a soft embrace. “I know, Wanda.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised into his shoulder.

“So will I.” He pulled away first, fixing her with an almost childish smirk. “Stay out of my room.”

The laugh hit her hard, nearly doubling her over. “Just go!” She shoved at his shoulder, not even hard enough to move him. “As though I would want to, anyway. Ass.”

“And don’t touch the wards I’ve placed in the second floor storage room!” he added, walking backwards through the portal, pointing sharply. “Or Wong’s bagels!”

“Wong will have to defend himself,” she laughed, waving him away. “Go, Stephen! I’ll be fine!”

Stephen nodded, didn’t have to say a word, and closed the portal behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the long wait on this one! had a long weekend at a friend's awesome nerdy bday party, and I wanted to make sure I got the background set up for the story as well as I could. I'm kinda worried about writing the Guardians (aside from Quill, who I've decided to just call Quill to keep the confusion between Peters to an absolute minimum), but only time will tell! Thanks so much again to everyone who's reading, you're all the best!


	3. empty bunk

The ship rumbled to life just as Tony made his way up the ramp and into its belly. Stephen lingered, waiting until everyone else had made their way inside, and his eyes searched the now-empty front lawn of the Compound. The Avengers had all retreated inside when they’d taken the conversation to the Sanctum, and now there was no one left to send them off. 

Not that Stephen felt slighted by the absence. But taking off to parts unknown in Quill’s ship without warning did leave a lingering sensation of apprehension in his gut. 

Still standing at the foot of the ramp, Stephen conjured a portal into the Compound’s lab, where Bruce Banner was settling in to help himself to a mug of steaming tea.

“Holy—!” Bruce cut himself off at Stephen’s sudden appearance—hand to his heart, glasses slid halfway down his nose and chest heaving. He set the tea aside, flopped back hard into his rolling chair. “You can’t do that, man. Jeez…”

“Sorry,” Stephen said, but he remained on the far side of the portal. There was an awkward shift in his stance, the closest to apologetic he was likely to look. “I wanted to let you know that we’re leaving.”

Bruce sat up slightly, craning his neck to look behind Stephen at the ship. “What’s the news about Thor?”

“Not sure,” Stephen sighed. “They’re not the best storytellers. Tony and I are headed out to where they lost him.” His brow crumpled in thought, and he peered questioningly at Bruce. “You were on a fair share of ships, weren’t you? How long is a trip of twenty jumps?”

“I was on Sakaar,” Bruce reminded him—took his reading glasses off and rubbed his eyes wearily, “where they tell me time worked _very_ differently. Also I wasn’t exactly myself a hundred percent of the time.”

Stephen nodded, not quite satisfied. “If we find anything, and if Quill’s ship can send a signal, we’ll let you know as soon as we can. But Bruce,” he added, and Bruce removed his hand to listen more intently at the change in tone. “If we’re not back within a week, something’s happened.”

One of Bruce’s hands pawed nervously at his opposite arm, an unconscious movement. “Right. Well, let’s hope nothing happens, I guess.”

As it seemed that was all, Stephen turned.

“Hey. Stephen,” Bruce said, rising to his feet to stop him—shifted his weight, held his tea close to the chest almost like a shield. Obligingly, Stephen returned his attention to him. “Thor… He looked out for me on Sakaar. Even after losing his hammer and getting a surprise evil sibling sprung on him, he made sure nothing happened to me. If he’s really in trouble, I just want to make sure…”

“Are you suggesting… coming along?” Stephen asked, unsure exactly where Bruce was going with this.

“Oh, hell no,” Bruce mumbled, shying from the shadow of the ship looming behind Stephen. “I don’t think my psyche is really up for—” He waved vaguely at the ship; at the Guardians. “— _all that_ right now.”

Stephen uttered a knowing chuckle, and some of the apprehension in Bruce’s shoulders lifted away. 

“I’m just saying that,” Bruce continued, “he’s not the kind of guy that wants to make trouble for anyone. And he’d never take people he called friends down with him. Just…”

“We’ll do everything we can,” Stephen said, stepping in (with a thankful, weary look from Bruce). He couldn’t promise any more than that, not without seeing what they were up against in person.

“Good luck,” Bruce said, ruffled a hand through his hair. “And I’ll keep the airwaves open for you.”

“Hey!” Quill shouted from behind him, leaning down to be seen from the ramp. “Let’s go already!”

Stephen fixed Bruce with a hard smirk, which was reflected back at him with a wave, and he shut the portal as a rather final end to their conversation. He turned and jogged up the ramp, the last one aboard. Quill’s eyes followed him, narrowed. 

“Your dude is already fucking around with my ship,” Quill said, slamming his hand to a big red button to pull up the ramp behind them.

“You think anything I could say would stop Tony Stark from playing with alien technology?” Stephen asked, glancing sideways in a knowing way.

“This is gonna be the worst trip ever,” Quill growled.

They found Tony crouched beside an array of speakers and wires, already having pulled some out and rerouted others—Quill pointing angrily, wordless, at the mess he was already making before takeoff. Stephen made a motion that he would do what he could. Not pleased, the captain peeled away toward the ladder that Stephen assumed lead to the cockpit. 

Tony had trapped his phone between his ear and shoulder, and Stephen walked in on half a conversation already minutes deep.

“That’s why I got the stamp, so you don’t need me.” Tony shifted his weight, sat fully down on the metal floor from his crouch, scooted closer to the latest wire he was inspecting. “It’s not gonna be like last time.” He winked up at Stephen, who came to one knee beside him. Tony flicked the phone once to put it on speaker. “Pep, say hi to Stephen.”

“Hi, Pepper,” Stephen said in their proximity.

“Oh, thank god,” Pepper’s voice came over the other end of the line. “Stephen, hi. I was worried he was going off on his own again.”

“I told you you’re not obligated to pull your hair out over me anymore,” Tony said, plucked another wire out and rerouted it.

“You’re still my friend, Tony,” she murmured, “ _and_ the figurehead of my company. I’m protecting an investment—”

“Investment,” Tony grumbled through a laugh, glancing at Stephen in their closeness. “We’re not fighting any roided-up intergalactic raisins, this time. Rescue mission, there and back again, promise.”

“Stephen, do me a favor?” Pepper asked.

“Anything,” Stephen chuckled.

“Make sure he doesn’t get himself killed, please.”

“I’ll do my absolute best,” he assured her. 

After they’d said their goodbyes, Tony tossed the phone into the nearby open duffel bag, wiped his hands clean of the business of rifling through Quill’s ship. “What took you so long?”

Stephen took a breath. “I thought we might want to tell one of the Avengers where we were going. Bruce,” he added at Tony’s non-verbal question.

Tony nodded, though the jocularity seemed to have left him. “Good choice. He and Thor went through some shit on Sakaar together.”

“So I’ve heard. And what were _you_ doing?”

“Oh, FRIDAY,” he said, grinning almost madly. He patted the scattered wires he’d been fiddling with, indicating the newest addition to Quill’s system. “Installed a mobile router. She won’t have the kind of control she’s got at the Sanctum, but at least I’ll have her close enough to help run diagnostics, and work on integrating the scanners. Oh,” he added with a malicious light in his eye. “And she’s gonna have control of the tunes, whenever Quill plugs ‘em in.”

“Dudes!” Quill shouted down the ladder at them. “If you’re _done_ , you gotta get up here for takeoff, okay? There’s no seatbelts down there!”

“Safety first,” Tony said through half a smirk, stealing a kiss while they were still close (let it linger just slightly too long) before he forced himself to his feet. Slung the duffel over one shoulder and climbed to the cockpit. Stephen would never admit how long he watched Tony climb that ladder, admiring very specific regions of his genius boyfriend.

He gathered himself, and waited until Tony was out of earshot. “FRIDAY,” he said quietly, turning to the new, blinking router. “What are the designations for this flight?”

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” FRIDAY said cheerfully. “Designations programmed for this node are the Boss and Doctor Handsome.”

“Is there _anything_ I can do to change my designation?” Stephen grumbled, already imagining the laughter from Quill and Mantis.

“He said you would say that,” FRIDAY answered. “And he told me to say ‘absolutely not, Doctor Handsome’.”

“Of course,” he sighed. “Thanks anyway.”

Up the ladder was another compartment, furnished with what looked like a multi-purpose table, lined with pipes and blinking control panels. The ship was, honestly, tidier than he’d expected it to be. A few empty cans lay scattered about, but most of the detritus had been swept into the most discreet corner. Six seats had been situated right at the front of the cockpit, facing the wide front windows, currently taken up by the white facade of the Compound. Tony had already found a seat for himself and buckled the mechanism across his chest—had manifested a hand of the Iron Man suit to interact with whatever interface his helmet was displaying for him. 

The glowing eyes of the helmet swung around to find Stephen, and the metallic projection of Tony’s voice said: “Saved you a seat, babe.” His finger pointing to the seat directly behind him.

Stephen saw Quill in his captain’s chair. Mantis seated carefully in her own behind him, head down. Nebula strapped into one in front of Quill. And three empty seats. The one directly next to Quill sported a series of interactive control panels and screens, and Stephen intuited that it must have been the navigator’s seat—where Tony was already seated.

Stephen sat where Tony had indicated, clipped himself securely in. Offered his hand on Tony’s shoulder, a lifeline.

“Everyone buckled?” Quill asked loudly without turning his head. “This ship doesn’t move ‘til we’re all buckled!”

“Safety harnesses are all engaged,” Nebula growled, “which you can read on your display.”

“Okay then!” Quill thoroughly ignored her. “Giddy-up!” he called, and plunged the controls down around him. 

And Stephen suddenly found Tony’s fingers gripping back at the anchor he’d left on Tony’s shoulder as the ship bounded up off the landing pad. The Iron Man armor bled away back into the arc reactor, as though he’d completely forgotten about it.

The liftoff was sudden, and the ascent even more so—the ship’s engines slammed them forward and upward with enough force to slap Stephen straight back into his seat (Quill was right about seat belts, go figure).

And, before he could register more than a slight turbulence as they passed through the atmosphere, the blackness of space surrounded them like an old blanket. Stephen had been unconscious for the ascent of the ship that had taken him from Earth over five months ago, and through the first leg of the journey—this was his first time leaving Earth with enough cognizance to remember it; to see the stars winking in around them as the shell of Earth’s atmosphere disappeared behind them. Not unlike leaving Earth behind to fling himself into the Dark Dimension.

The moment was interrupted when a small satellite crumpled into the front of Quill’s ship.

“Oh, shit,” Quill murmured, tipping the craft to dump the debris to the side. “No MTV tonight, I guess. Let’s set coordinates for the Outox system, Rock—” Quill cut himself off hard, his arms going stiff. “Uh, right. I’ll set coordinates.”

As Quill’s ship hurtled further and further from Earth, as he pressed the coordinates slowly into the display embedded in his captain’s chair, Stephen finally hissed at the pain in his fingers that had been steadily growing since that blackness outside the ship had enveloped them.

Tony jerked like Stephen had slapped him. “God, Stephen, sorry,” he blustered, yanked his hand back like Stephen had been linking fingers with a hot stove element—turned in his seat just enough to run a worried glance all over Stephen’s person.

“I’m fine,” Stephen assured him, tentatively flexing his fingers (shaking too much, his shame reflecting in Tony’s eyes).

Tony rifled his hand back through his hair—maybe a bit too harshly, by the way it made his hair stand up—and fixed a look on his face that was just short of devastated. His mouth fell open, full of words that didn’t come, and he snapped it shut again. There was a caged look in his eye again, which was snatched fervently away when the ship lurched into the first jump.

“Jesus—” Tony snapped, reeling back around to face forward in his seat.

The black space in front of the ship had melted spectacularly into a display that might put Kubrick to shame, like being shot through a kaleidoscope. But it felt as if their speed hadn’t changed at all, as if space itself was bending around them (and, perhaps, Stephen thought, it was; he had little idea of what practical galactic travel might look like).

“So,” Quill said casually to match Tony’s panic, leaning back in his chair. “Twenty jumps isn’t gonna take that long, even at civilian speed, but the thing we found was kinda out of the way from any good jump points.”

“Okay?” Tony prompted, doing his best impression of someone calm.

“So, we’re gonna be here a while. Maybe long enough for a couple old farts to need to take a nap.” Quill unclipped his harness and beckoned for Tony and Stephen to follow. “Nebula, you got the helm. Scream if something bad happens.”

She opened her mouth, maybe to say something scathing, and then something else came into her face. Something almost reserved. She nodded, and when he had vacated the cockpit, she moved into Quill’s seat.

Stephen was the first to dare leaving his seat, and it was as if the ship weren’t moving at all. Maybe he’d gotten his sea legs (space legs?), or maybe this mode of fast travel was more secure than something as primitive as a train or a cruise ship. He offered a hand to help Tony out of his seat in turn, but taking one (wincing) look at the proffered hand, Tony lifted himself free with barely-shaking limbs. The heavy duffel bag he’d brought along hung in one hand, dead weight swinging.

Space warped and sheared around the viewports of the ship, colors and light flashing off the interior piping as Quill moved them to one of the sections under one of the wings. Three bunks, half of the crew quarters. There was nothing to distinguish the doors from one another to Stephen’s eyes, but Quill knew exactly where he was going. To the last bunk.

He hesitated. Hand lingering just an inch over the button that would presumably open the hatch and let them in. Stephen’s eyes flicked from the nondescript door to look instead at Quill.

Quill’s face wasn’t built for sadness, Stephen decided suddenly. It fit his features oddly, tilted his jaw (held too tightly, teeth practically grinding). There was something dark gathering in his eyes, dour clouds that spoke of cold rain. His throat bobbed, just once, and he sniffed in a harsh breath through his nose. Cleared his throat, and fixed whatever temporary weakness there had been on his face.

“Well, you can throw your crap in here, I guess,” Quill tried to play it off. He opened the hatch, and a very bare bunk lay in front of them. Cot-like single bed (some kind of blanket thrown over it), a naked light overhead, a stack of crates in one corner—all of them labeled _Gamora_.

At the same time the realization hit Stephen, it must have hit Tony too, by the way he’d gone rod-straight beside him.

Before either of them could say anything, Quill stepped brusquely away. He turned at the ladder, didn’t meet either of them in the eye.

“Stark, what’s your computer chick’s name again?” he asked, looking around as if she’d materialize.

“FRIDAY,” Tony said, blinking. 

“Yeah, Boss?” her voice came through the ship’s speaker system.

“New designation, Peter Quill,” Tony answered. “Give him access to the music files he’s gonna plug into the node.” He waved Quill on, and once he’d disappeared, he practically collapsed into their temporary doorway. 

“Tony?” Stephen asked, moving quietly into the shared space of the doorway.

“Fine,” Tony breathed. “Not a panic attack. Just… it’s her bunk, right?”

Stephen nodded, didn’t look inside (it had been stripped of anything personal, anything that might remind the crew of whose life had happened in that space, hidden in crates as if that might make it easier). “Gamora,” he said quietly. 

“She was… she was Quill’s girlfriend, right? Or something?”

“Something,” Stephen murmured. 

He’d seen so many futures, but he’d never been lucky enough to see one with her in it. Never been able to put a face to the name Quill had cried all of those millions of times on Titan (screamed, tears in his eyes as he tried to beat Thanos into submission with brute force alone). He’d never even seen a picture of her, but he felt that he knew her, somehow. Through the force of the Guardians’ love for her repeatedly slamming into him fourteen million times; through Quill’s heartache, over and over and… It had never been as tangible as this.

Stephen watched Tony’s eyes for any further sign of distress, for any hint of a break in him. But Tony’s gaze only lingered at the spartan bunk behind them. He could have been thinking anything, the way those eyes were working double-time in his head.

“Hey,” Tony said at last, turning to face Stephen—it wasn’t particularly difficult, the doorway almost wasn’t wide enough to fit the both of them. “Lemme see.” Held out a hand until Stephen understood, placed his own palm-up in Tony’s waiting fingers. “How bad did I hurt you?”

“You didn’t—” Stephen began, but halted that lie at the narrow-eyed look from Tony. “Not bad. You’ve done worse.”

“Yikes,” Tony breathed, but a grin tilted up on one side. “Can’t believe I was so stupid. Didn’t even think…”

And he pressed Stephen’s fingers to his mouth, the lightest touch, barely a kiss at all. For something so fleeting, the effect on Stephen was more like being hit by a train—right in the middle, in the chest where his heart slammed hard against his ribs. How on Earth, after all this time, could something so small still make him feel like it was the first time Tony Stark had kissed him?

“You’re blushing,” Tony said, his mouth a full, cocky grin now (still holding Stephen’s hand like it was made of china).

Stephen let out a little breath (shaking, just enough to be heard), dug a smirk out of whatever jumble of feelings Tony had stuck into his middle. “I love you.”

“I seriously love you,” Tony replied. Kissed Stephen’s scarred fingers three more times before he let go. 

“Hey, FRIDAY,” Quill’s voice came down the ladder, bouncing through the corridor. “This is how it works right?”

“It is,” FRIDAY replied. “Want me to play the music the Boss queued up for you?”

“Hell yeah! Wait, I mean, affirmative.”

“Hell yeah works just fine,” FRIDAY assured him. “Playing Tony Stark’s Top Tracks.”

Three seconds later, Eiffel 65’s one-hit eurodance wonder “Blue” started blasting out of every speaker on Quill’s ship. 

Just a decibel louder was Quill’s shout: “What the _fuck_ is this, Stark?!”

Tony’s face buckled into loud, hard laughter. Actually slapped his thigh.

“Tones,” Stephen laughed softly (waited until Tony had wiped at a hilarious tear at the corner of his eye). “Did you fill FRIDAY with music you knew Quill would hate?”

“Oh hell yeah,” Tony giggled. “There’s some disco after this.”

An impossible grin split Stephen’s face, and he dissolved into tight laughter to match. Outside, the galaxy flew by, one jump at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Blue - Eiffel 65](https://youtu.be/zA52uNzx7Y4)
> 
> the bad music begins


	4. more disco

There were no windows in Gamora’s bunk, and Stephen was glad for it for Tony’s sake. From this vantage point, it almost felt like the ship wasn’t even moving at all. Tony unpacked his duffel in peace—pieces of scrap, to Stephen’s untrained eye (but everyone knew what Tony could do with scraps); a few tubes of nanites to repair his suit and their housing in the arc reactor, should he need a refill; a change of clothes for both of them; their toothbrushes. Stephen sat on the bare bunk, watched Tony sit and scatter his pieces all over what little floor space was available, sorting in a way that seemed to make sense only to him.

When the ship came out of the last jump, there was barely a change in velocity. Tony’s hand still clamped down on Stephen’s knee, even at the nearly imperceptible shift. He used that grip to lever himself to his feet before Stephen could reassuringly link their fingers there, and Tony was out the door first. Stephen followed him topside.

“Are we there?” Tony asked, stalked across the length of the shared space outside the cockpit (Lounge? Sitting room? Den?) to stare at Quill in his captain’s chair. 

“What? No,” Quill said incredulously, squinting up and away at Tony. “That was the easy part. I don’t know if you guys know this, but space is big. Like, _really_ big. If there’s no good jump point close enough, you can be sailing for weeks.”

“Excuse me, _weeks_?” Tony snapped, throat tight and voice hard. “I didn’t sign on for _weeks_ —”

“God, let me talk for a second?” Quill cut back in.

Stephen absolutely couldn’t hide the satisfied (proud) little smile crawling onto his features. Satisfying not only to _not_ be on the receiving end of that unending stream of sass, but that it was so very _Tony_ (so very much a part of the man he loved). 

“I didn’t say _this_ trip was gonna take weeks,” Quill continued, slicing a firm hand through the air between them. “Does he ever listen before he opens his mouth?” He asked the last of Stephen, face pinched with annoyance.

The smirk finally burst in full on Stephen’s face. “Rarely.”

“Hey, whose side are you on, sunshine?” Tony butter back in, elbowing Stephen in the side playfully. “Okay, so what’s the actual timeline? If I’m gonna get something up and going to scan your anomaly, I gotta know if its hours or days I’m working with.”

“Give me three literal seconds! I lost my usual navigator, okay?” Quill grumbled, and he gave a full-body sigh before he stood out of his seat. “Nebula, can I—could you—?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed to meet him, but she stalked over to the navigator chair regardless. Her fingers flew over the star chart displayed, and within a few moments, the readout began flashing nearby.

“We’ll arrive at the last known location of the anomaly in half a standard week,” she answered at last—settled back into the chair and folded her arms.

“Standard week?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Not everything runs on Earth time, y’know,” Quill murmured, scratching absently at his stubble. “For a long time everything ran on the Xandar standard, but with the Nova Corps wiped out… Might not be the standard forever, I guess.”

“So, like, a week?” Tony pulled, waving his arms expectantly.

“Like, three and a half days for you, probably,” Quill said, literally counting on his fingers. “We’ve got the ship running on eight-hour light cycles anyway. So, pull up a chair and get comfy. We’re basically roomies for a couple days.”

“Okay,” Tony said finally. “Okay, three days. I can do that.”

He turned and was back down the ladder to the loading bay before Stephen could get another word in.

“I thought he hated you,” Nebula said, and Stephen was surprised to find that she was talking to him. Her arms still folded; not as bitter and angry as she usually looked (countered by the worried, almost affronted look that had slammed onto Mantis’ face on his behalf).

Stephen took a small breath. “He did. You were the only one left on Titan with him.”

“I was,” she answered, just as vague. “He didn’t weep. The only words he said before we started our work was cursing your name.”

Stephen didn’t look away, didn’t let the heft of it bend his gaze from hers. He didn’t even shift his weight (as if even that would be an acknowledgement). Even as the collar of the cloak stood straight up like a spooked cat, full of anger on his behalf, Stephen was barely moved—waved the cloak gently down from its stance to surge forward at her.

“I thought you said you liked me,” he said instead, a vague movement at one corner of his mouth, a ghost of a smirk.

“I do,” she uttered, and there was a moment of confusion on her face. “I wanted to know how you did it. He despised you, and now he doesn’t.”

Mantis tapped her fingertips together, watching him even more closely now—he knew that she was an empath, and wondered if her power was strong enough to sense his feelings on the subject from her chair. Even Quill glanced up, as surreptitiously as Quill could probably manage (again, not very), evidently interested in the explanation as well.

And all Stephen could offer them was a heavy, weary shrug. “I met him before he met me. I had practice.”

“Uh,” Quill offered, his face bunching in an effort to put it together. But before he could ponder on it much longer, the next song queued up with a loud and enthusiastic synthetic high-hat. “Oh, hey, I know this one!” he said joyfully—his face almost physically lighting up as a familiar bass line struck the ship. “That’s David Bowie and Queen, that’s—”

It was, in fact, _not_ “Under Pressure”, as Quill quickly found out. The nasally rapping of Vanilla Ice stuck him like an icepick to the heart, his joyous face slowly falling at the devastating realization. Stephen felt a chuckle hit him like he’d been struck in the middle, which he tried quickly to cover up with a cough (he failed, judging by the roll of Nebula’s eyes).

“What the fuck,” Quill said, barely over a whisper. “Can they do that? That should be _super illegal_.” He raised his voice over the music. “FRIDAY! Hey, can you make this stop?!”

“Peter Quill only has access to the music files in Tony Stark’s Top Tracks, not control over them. So, I’m afraid I could only do that if it’s authorized by the Boss,” FRIDAY informed him, barely louder than the refrain of “Ice Ice Baby”.

“Stark!” Quill all but screamed, and was only answered by the echoing sounds of Tony’s laughter through the ship.

+++

The arm of the suit Tony’d had out just before launch was back when he returned to the room outside the cockpit (Stephen decided that it was more of a lounge than a sitting room), and he laid several of the scraps he’d brought with him out on the table workspace.

“Hey,” Tony said quietly, his eyes flashing up when Stephen approached, relaxing just in his presence. “Don’t—Could you—?”

Tony cleared his throat awkwardly, but Stephen luckily understood without having to be told. The cloak pillowed under him, sitting in midair just to Tony’s right. He wasn’t going anywhere. Tony laughed softly, rubbed a hand over his face, and nodded his thanks in silence.

And they sat in that silence for what could have been hours. The three remaining crew buzzing around them in their duties (if it could be assumed they had any _actual_ duties) as Tony worked and Stephen watched. Every now and then, Tony would lean over and show Stephen what he was doing, pointing out the purpose and function of any additions to the makeshift scanner he was building. And, even if Stephen didn’t quite get the gist of the more technical aspects, he was attentive and Tony was patient. 

“I, um,” Tony began after a long stretch of silence, still tinkering deeply. “I heard you and Nebula talking.”

“Sound carries,” Stephen noted, at which Tony flushed a deep red with a line of airy laughter.

“Note taken,” Tony muttered, and with a pinpoint of laser light from the arm of his suit, he’d soldered two of the pieces in front of him together. 

His thoughts drifted for some time—long minutes of comfortable silence, with the noise of Tony’s metal fingers working bits of wire together in arrays Stephen didn’t understand, the beat of yet another disco hit playing around them (“Disco Inferno”, The Trammps, December 1976; the extended version released on the _Saturday Night Fever_ soundtrack, Stephen noted under his breath). Tony bouncing just slightly to the beat, nodding his head. Stephen’s foot waggled in the air, and even the cloak was tapping at Stephen’s knee, the beat infectious.

“The last time we were on a spaceship together,” Tony said out of nowhere, not looking up from his tinkering, “you threatened to throw me and Pete under the bus for the time stone.”

Stephen’s eyes ticked up, lingered on the back of Tony’s head. Watching silently for any of the signs he’d come to know preceding one of his panic attacks. Though his shoulders had dropped, it was the only indication that anything had changed in Tony’s demeanor. And, not only was he watching, but he could feel Mantis’ big eyes on them from her seat in the corner.

They had barely talked about it, even if it was what had brought them together in the end. They’d barely touched the surface of their mismatched timelines, even after months of living together. They’d danced around it, altogether avoided it. Until now, it seemed. Funny place to finally drag it all up, Stephen thought.

“It was a joke, back at the Sanctum, but I think I really _hated_ you.” Something stuck in Tony’s throat as the last word left him, and he let the silence stand for a long few seconds. “God, I knew what you were saying made sense—giving Thanos the stone meant the end of the universe, and we were just two of the people in it. But it didn’t stop the fact I hated you. And you just _let me_ hate you.”

Finally, Tony’s head tilted to find Stephen; fix him in his eyes, stare him down. And Stephen didn’t run from it.

“Did you already know?” Tony asked.

“That I was in love with you?”

“That you’d give up the stone for me.” 

Tony took in a breath, his sad eyes hyper-focused—like it was the first time he’d _really_ thought about it. To be quite honest, Stephen didn’t like to think about it more than he was forced to (staring down the Mad Titan, watching him violently turn Tony’s own blade against him, plunging hard between his ribs).

Stephen shook his head, found himself breaking eye contact rather swiftly. “No.” When he blinked, Tony Stark died millions of times behind his eyelids, the fractions of memories of timelines that would never be, still haunting him. “Before Titan, before looking into millions of possible timelines, I only knew that you would get the gauntlet and that you’d come to me. I…” He threaded thin fingers back through his hair. “I don’t know if I could have given Thanos the stone if I hadn’t been trying to bring about that future.”

“Even though you knew us,” Tony pressed. “Even though you—you felt the way you did… you’d have let us die for the stone?”

“Don’t ask me that, Tony,” Stephen said, finally raised his eyes (locked with Tony’s, the glassy sadness of his own face reflected in the way Tony’s face bent in sympathy). “Please.”

They sat in silence for some time, the only noise that of the ship’s engines around them. Even the caterwauling of Quill arguing with FRIDAY was only enough to elicit a fraction of a laugh from Tony’s frame.

“You’re—” Tony began, but something in his throat cut the sentence off for him. He cleared it loudly, obtrusively, and hung his head. He chose different words when he started again. “I mean, I guess it’s fair. You had to watch us die so many times, it’s only fair you’d get sick of it.”

“That’s not—”

“I know that’s not why you did it,” Tony interrupted, sighed and gathered himself. “I was trying to make a joke. Lift the mood.” 

As if on cue, the music switched. Something softer, a mellow beat to match the dimming of the lights overhead. Eight hour light cycles, Quill had said. Must have been getting close to the closest approximation of “night” they would get.

“Huh,” Stephen sighed, eyes ticking up in thought “‘How Deep is Your Love’, Bee Gees, September 1977. More disco?” Stephen asked incredulously, a smile trying to hover at the edges of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Tony sighed, waving sadly in Quill’s general direction in the cockpit. “I seriously overestimated how much he was gonna hate it. I think he actually _likes_ it.” And, after a moment, he turned to fully face Stephen like he’d made a decision. “Y’know, someone might think you’re a doctor or something.”

Stephen only narrowed his gaze, cocked his head.

“You’re so damn clinical, sometimes,” Tony murmured, and he had stepped into Stephen’s space before he’d blinked. Took Stephen by the wrist and pulled him up out of the cloak’s embrace and to his feet. 

It wasn’t until he felt Tony’s hand warm in the small of his back (pulling him just that much closer) that he understood just what he was doing. The heat in his ears, he told himself, was from the eyes of Mantis he knew were still watching from her corner. They leaned together into a step, then back into another—like a pair of teenagers, slightly gangly and awkward, as of they hadn’t quite come to understand the space that they took up together.

“Wow,” Tony laughed through a breath, leading Stephen clunkily into the next step, “have you ever danced with a human being before?”

“Including hoedowns and homecoming?” Stephen laughed through the spreading embarrassment on his face, ducked his head in a way he hoped would hide his red ears. At Tony’s confused, giddy, prying expression, Stephen said: “It’s… been a while.”

“So, sorcerers don’t dance,” Tony said quietly (Stephen tried to look at anything other than Tony’s adoring face staring up at him), leading the most simplistic, rudimentary dance either of them had probably partaken in.

“A little busy keeping the horrors of dimensions unknown from engulfing the Earth,” Stephen replied, a childish smirk playing with the edges of his mouth.

“How can you be so serious all the time?” Tony asked. His arms looped up around Stephen’s neck, fingers linked loosely, hips swaying with one of Stephen’s hands on either side; inching in an intimate circle on a ship hurtling through space, Bee Gees crooning in their ears.

“Because you’re _never_ serious,” Stephen laughed, low and deep.

Tony made a small, dismissive noise. “I can be serious.”

“When?” Stephen prodded—finally meeting his eyes and holding there, swaying gently to the music.

“When the world’s ending,” Tony said flippantly, that snarky look filling his expressive face. At Stephen’s non-verbal provocation, he went on. “When I need to be. When I have to get some powerful space jewelry to work. When my boyfriend gets himself trapped in the Mirror Dimension.” Tony took the smallest breath, his shoulders settled. “Steph, look at me.”

It made something twist deep in Stephen’s chest, and their dance came to a halt. The music echoed in the close space, through the innards of the ship. Stephen met the growing strength pouring out of Tony’s face, didn’t look away this time.

“I’d do anything for you,” Tony said, firm and warm and loving (working his fingers through Stephen’s hair). “But I know you don’t always have the same choice. I just get the one dimension to look out for, but you…” A soft laugh left him, his expression melting into brazen, stupid love. “Well, horrors of dimensions unknown, and all that jazz. What’s one guy to all that?”

Stephen opened his mouth, but Tony didn’t let him say anything—they were already so close that all Tony had to do was stand on his toes to take Stephen’s mouth with his. Laced his fingers through the hair at the back of Stephen’s neck, held them close. The movements of his mouth calm and reassuring, but pressing—prying, like he had to know, like Stephen had to know… 

“I know,” Stephen said between slow and searching kisses. 

The song faded out around them, leaving only the briefest silence, where the sound of their mouths (their mingled breath, the little noise Tony made when Stephen’s fingers tightened on his hip and pulled him closer) was the only noise on the ship.

And then Rick Astley broke into the moment, “Never Gonna Give You Up” blasting into that silence and shattering it with a nearly physical jolt. Enough to break Tony back from his mouth—eyes shining, throwing his head back as bouts of mirthful laughter already poured out of him.

Stephen just stared. Took everything in like it was a moment frozen in time, saving every little piece of Tony he could get his eyes on. Absolutely enraptured by this man.

And he knew. Knew this wasn’t just the man he loved. This was the man he was going to spend the rest of his life with.

Movement at the corner of his vision stole Stephen’s gaze, and he only caught a second’s worth of Quill’s face before the captain turned sharply away. Brows a stormy mix of emotion, red-faced and glass-eyed, trying his best not to let his breath shake as it left him. No anger, not that Stephen could see—but something more terrible. An indescribable sadness, fully eclipsing Quill’s body and engulfing him, barely contained by his stiff breath and hitched step as he disappeared into the bunks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tony Stark's Top Tracks to Annoy Peter Quill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XAiDTupQRQ&list=PLrAFsB7w90iwchd71G_tY9PXffWFBsk5S)  
>  And you know he'd pick the 10 minute version of ANY song he thought would annoy Quill. Songs added to playlist as they appear!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone reading, it's good to know you're still here even if I'm so slow. Even if I'm just writing for myself, I'm still having fun writing for these boys, so it's good to know there's still a couple of you out there! Much love, and stay awesome <3


	5. Gamora

“Yeah, I think I’m just gonna pull an all-nighter,” Tony mumbled, looking at what he’d managed to put together so far—arms akimbo like a monarch surveying his country. 

Stephen briefly examined the table he’d commandeered for his work on the supplementary scanners. It looked like an absolute mess to him. Tony would make something out of it, that much he knew. But not tonight.

“No, you’re not,” Stephen replied evenly. On cue, the cloak swept off of Stephen’s shoulders and wrapped itself around Tony, pinning those arms down.

Tony glared, tried to remove his arms from the snare. “Seriously? Cloak trap?”

“Seriously,” Stephen reiterated, and a nod was all he needed for the cloak to lift off the ground, Tony with it. “We’ll need to be fully-functioning when we arrive at the anomaly, for the Guardians’ sake as well as Thor’s.”

“I’m fully-functional,” Tony protested.

Stephen only laughed, once and hard. When he moved, the cloak (and Tony) followed. He said his goodnights to Mantis and Nebula, eyes lingering on the ladder that Quill had descended hours ago.

“Okay, okay, enough with the wrangling,” Tony said. “Levi, cut it out already.”

The cloak’s collar twitched up, as though looking from Stephen to Tony. It made a little shrug and let Tony loose, swirling around the both of them before settling gently on Tony’s shoulders.

The dim overhead light shone on the bare-bones cabin they’d been given for the trip, the only dressing aside from the duffel bag Tony had brought along being the cot-like bunk (Stephen wondered absently just how far off of it his feet might hang).

“Not a lot of room,” Tony murmured, settling onto the bunk. Patted the spot beside him. “Wanna snuggle up, sweetheart?”

The cloak popped up, circled the room once, and finally situated itself exactly like a hammock, hovering in midair on the other side of the cabin. Stephen smirked, climbed in and closed his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Tony,” Stephen murmured.

There was a brief sound of movement from Tony’s direction. The light overhead turned off completely, and soon Stephen felt the man himself looming over him in the cloak hammock. Stephen opened one eye, looking blithely up at the shadow of the man standing over him, linked his fingers calmly over his chest.

“G’night?” Tony asked.

“Goodnight,” Stephen uttered, closed his eyes again.

Tony left a kiss at Stephen’s temple, lingered. And then climbed bodily in on top of him, limbs flailing. Stephen gave a little truncated cry when an elbow hit him in the chest, followed by a quiet apology as Tony tucked himself into any space not taken up by Stephen’s body.

“I was trying to give you some room,” Stephen chuckled uselessly, fought to free an arm so he could wrap it around Tony’s back.

“Hm,” Tony hummed against him, face tucked just under Stephen’s jaw. “I’m needy, though. Kinda used to you sleeping next to me, now.”

“Go to sleep, Tony,” Stephen sighed again, running long fingers through Tony’s hair, already resigned to the situation.

“Love you,” Tony’s voice rumbled against his neck.

Stephen wondered how, hurtling through space on a ship full of weirdos on a rescue mission to a supposed artificial Convergence, he could possibly feel this content. How hearing those words out of Tony’s incredible mouth could still, after months, make his pulse jump and his insides do flips.

“Love you, too,” Stephen answered, barely more than a whisper.

+++

It couldn’t have been more than a handful of hours later. Certainly not long enough for the artificial light cycle of the ship to kick back on to its simulation of daytime. In their extreme closeness, Stephen was shaken awake by the trembling body lined up with his.

Stephen’s eyes creaked open, temporarily unaware of just where (when? how?) he was. Not the Sanctum, not draped in rumpled sheets, not waking from his own recurring nightmares. In the middle of space on a strange musical spaceship, that was right. And it was Tony tucked into him, shivering, followed by an accompanying worried movement from the cloak’s collar somewhere over his head.

Stephen waved the cloak wordlessly back, and though it didn’t return to being completely inanimate, it did settle just slightly.

Nightmares. It wasn’t bad enough this time to shock Tony awake (sweaty and screaming), but disconcerting nonetheless. He’d sat in darkness long enough, Tony’s head in his lap as he ran those dreams over and over out loud, to know what he was dreaming about. That cold void he’d plunged himself into over New York, nuclear warhead in his hands—staring down hundreds of ships headed for the portal he’d intended to have close behind him. 

Stephen ran his own trembling fingers through Tony’s hair, a light touch.

“I’ve got you,” Stephen murmured just above Tony’s ear. Held a long, protective kiss there. “I’ve got you, love.”

Tony’s face burrowed instinctively deeper against Stephen’s neck, and he shivered sadly there. And after long minutes of Stephen’s calm fingers through his hair (breathy little reassurances pouring from his mouth) Tony stirred again. Raised his head just enough to look sleepily into Stephen’s eyes—or so he assumed; the darkness was almost wholly complete in the borrowed cabin.

“Hey,” he said—groggy, thin, hoarse with latent tension. “Sorry. Woke you up again.”

“It’s fine,” Stephen said, searched out Tony’s face in the darkness. Found it with his fingertips, held him gently. “Okay?”

Tony held Stephen’s hand against his face, ran a thumb over those scarred fingers in a warm circuit. “Yeah. Now.”

Against his own advice, Stephen didn’t sleep. He kept vigilant watch over the man sleeping against him, assured of his steady breathing and uninterrupted rest. With Stephen’s acute sense of time, it was three hours later when the light overhead came on. Dim, just enough to shed light on the two of them cocooned together in the cloak hammock. And it was nearly thirty minutes after, that FRIDAY came to check on them.

“Morning, Boss,” her voice came from one of Tony’s pockets. He snorted awake at her voice, the sudden movement nearly tipping the both of them out of the cloak’s embrace.

“Woah, shit,” Tony grumbled, panic wide in his sleepy eyes. The cloak swung precariously, and Tony steadied himself with a hand planted on either side of Stephen’s head. “FRIDAY, what the hell?” he asked the air indiscriminately.

“Sorry for the rude awakening, but you _did_ set an alarm,” FRIDAY replied evenly.

“Sounds like something I’d do,” Tony grumbled. And his eyes dropped to the blinking, nonplussed face of his boyfriend pinned under him—both of them still gently swaying in the cloak hammock. A smile perked onto Tony’s lips. “Hey, Tall Dark and Handsome. You come here often?” he murmured, smirking down at his doctor with a wink.

Disgruntled, the cloak finally did dump the both of them unceremoniously on the floor. The dual thud of their bodies reverberated through the cabin, followed by Tony’s wonderful laughter.

Someone banged on the wall the cabin shared with the one beside it—Stephen guessed that it would be Nebula, as Quill’s bunk was on the other side of the ship, and he couldn’t see Mantis reacting so violently.

“Someone’s not a morning person,” Tony mumbled, extricating himself carefully from the jumble of limbs he and Stephen had become.

“ _You’re_ not a morning person,” Stephen added, standing to his full height. 

“Oh my god, d’you think Quill has coffee on this flying death trap?” Tony asked as he stood, wrangled yesterday’s T-shirt over his head. “Do they have coffee in space?”

“He’ll have something, Tones,” Stephen said, the smile already taking root on his face (in his eyes, burrowing deep into his chest).

“God help me, I’ll synthesize some shitty bean water out of the goddamn ether if I have to,” Tony grumbled, rifled through the duffel until he found something else to wear. A plain white shirt with a big gray kitten on it (an extremely purposeful purchase on Tony’s part).

“I love you,” Stephen laughed; he was barely awake and had already managed to get lost in Tony’s eyes.

A sharp, knowing smirk took hold of Tony’s mouth, and he eyed Stephen up and down in an obvious motion before he tossed the shirt aside, moved in, and stole a kiss.

“So, what’re you gonna do about it?” he asked, lips still close enough to brush against Stephen’s with every word out of them.

Close enough for Stephen to feel his own blush radiating off of Tony and back at him. How could something so completely harmless hit him that hard? He took a steadying breath, tried to wrangle in his rapidly-fleeing thought processes. He failed completely.

Stephen seized Tony’s face in both of his hands and pulled them back together at the mouths, practically pouncing. And Tony surged back in enthusiastically, grabbed a handful of Stephen’s backside and hitched them even closer. An odd, low noise caught in Stephen’s throat (bobbing with half-caught breath, poorly-hidden eagerness).

They struggled very briefly over just who was in charge. Tony won (this time). Pressed Stephen up against the closest wall, pinned him—skillfully worked Stephen’s tunic half open to snake his cold fingers over warm ribs.

“Hey, what d’you call the mile-high club in space?” Tony murmured against Stephen’s neck, grinning between open-mouthed kisses.

Stephen rolled his eyes at the ceiling, but couldn’t manage more than a throaty groan against the ministrations of Tony’s mouth.

Something was wrong, Stephen found himself thinking even as Tony’s fingers made short work of the rest of his tunic, grazed over his hips, moving diligently south. Through the haze of affection, the something that was wrong was twisting deeper into his gut.

“Wait,” Stephen choked.

Tony’s hands jerked back, and Stephen felt colder for it. “What?” Tony asked, concern bleeding through his heady voice. 

Stephen took a hard swallow, opened his eyes. Tony was still close, hands hovering just inches away, his brows bent with worry. 

“We can’t do this,” Stephen managed to say, leaned heavily back against the wall with a sigh.

Tony blinked, let the silence have its moment. And a sigh hit him, too—but he took his step backward out of the situation.

“Afraid Quill’s gonna walk in, or something?” Tony asked, flopping backward onto the bunk.

“Tony, he lost the only woman he ever loved,” Stephen answered, slowly closing his tunic back up. “You don’t think it’s throwing that in his face every time he sees us together on his ship? Besides,” he added, fixing his hair, “noise carries, and you can be… _noisome_.”

Tony lost himself in a fit of tight laughter, grinning up at Stephen from the bed. “Oh yeah? At least _I_ don’t make the lights go out, Mister Wizard.”

A flash of heat burned on Stephen’s face like he’d been covered in gasoline, his hands frozen halfway through the work of fixing the hair Tony had ruffled. His mouth bobbed once, speechless. “I do _what_?”

Tony sat up, the look on his face as brilliant as if he’d just been handed a long-awaited present. “Wait. You don’t do it on purpose?” At Stephen’s red-faced silence, Tony’s grin only pulled even wider. “I thought you were doing it to be dramatic!”

He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but Stephen flushed more darkly. “You mean to say that when I—when we—the _lights go out_?”

Oh, Tony was having the time of his life, grinning and laughing—stood off the bed to hold Stephen’s burning face in both of his hands and beam up at him. “Hey, not every time,” he managed between bubbles of laughter. “Sometimes they just flicker a little.”

“Oh my god,” Stephen grumbled, hid his face in one of his hands (felt an embarrassed laugh rumble out of him, the firm press of Tony’s lips on his forehead).

When he opened his eyes, Stephen found Tony staring up at him with a soft, happy expression fixed over a lopsided, adoring smile. It tugged at Stephen’s mouth, pulled on a flustered smirk for him. Hid it by moving in for another kiss, which Tony happily obliged.

“We should talk to him,” Stephen said after he took a step away (fixed his hair again; why was Tony obsessed with mussing it?).

“I am _so_ not qualified to try and fix someone else’s emotional issues,” Tony said, took a seat again on the edge of the bunk. He waved generally in Stephen’s direction. “You’re the guy who basically shamed the Avengers back together, _you_ talk to him.”

Stephen sighed. Nodded once. If this mission was going to succeed, they needed everyone to be on the top of their game. And, judging by the last glimpse Stephen had of Quill’s face, the man was one ill-timed moment from a breakdown. Which, unfortunately, seemed to be Stephen’s speciality.

He pressed a long kiss to the top of Tony’s head before he left the cabin (heard Tony’s contented little sigh after he’d turned away, the sound of his body flopping backwards onto the bunk).

The ship was quiet when Stephen emerged out into it, and only found Nebula quietly pacing circles around the table Tony had claimed last night. No one in the cockpit, hardly any noise aside from the engines.

“Where’s Quill?” Stephen asked.

“Still in his cabin,” Nebula said succinctly. She strode by him on her third loop since he’d come topside. “I think Stark’s music finally drove him insane.”

Stephen sighed, acknowledged the possibility with a shrug, and headed for the opposite series of cabins. Nebula’s spine stiffened, and her pacing ceased abruptly.

“Where are you going?” she asked, a sharp hitch in her voice.

“Speaking to the captain,” Stephen said, half turning. “Unless his bodyguard is keeping visitors at bay.”

If he thought Nebula capable of blushing, she might have been. “Bodyguard?” she spat with a flustered laugh. “He couldn’t afford my protection.” Her body language hovered on the edge of another emotion. He realized that it was well-hidden concern, stuffed deep under a facade of angry stoicism. “You’re going to talk about Thor and the others?”

“I’m going to apologize,” Stephen uttered. “For overly-public displays of affection.”

She relaxed, just slightly, and nodded.

Stephen smirked. “Permission to pass?”

“I am _not_ his bodyguard,” she reminded him. But, after a pause, motioned him by.

Stephen’s hand hovered over the door to Quill’s cabin. Inadvertent flashbacks to standing outside of Wanda Maximoff’s door at the Avengers Compound pinged increasingly at the back of his head the longer he hesitated. But this was different. He had hardly even properly met Wanda when she’d come to him. He knew Quill, knew him perhaps better than any of his crew could possibly know him. Had seen him die in millions of terrible ways, seen his tears and seen his joy; lived through years and years of that battle on Titan with Quill by his side. But Quill didn’t know him. Barely interacted with him, maybe didn’t even remember his first name. He might not be a welcome face.

But he knocked anyway.

“Seriously not in the mood right now, Mantis,” Quill shouted through the door.

“Quill, it’s—” Stephen? “Doctor Strange. We should talk.”

After a moment’s further grumbling and the sound of several somethings hitting the floor on the other side of that door, it opened for him. Peter Quill standing in the doorway like a man that hadn’t slept for days. Eyes red and downcast, his normally cheerful face fixed with a dour frown.

“Hey, man,” Quill said, voice raw like he’d been screaming. “It’s _not_ a good time. Why don’t you mosey on back down to Gamora’s old room and mack on your dude some more?” He winced, hated it, and hung his head even lower. “Sorry. That was mean.”

Stephen allowed it. “May I come in?”

Quill blinked a bit oddly at that. “Uh.”

“To talk,” Stephen added.

Even more confused than before, Quill’s brows drew together like they were on a string. “Well, it’s real dirty in here. Haven’t had company over in a while. But sure, I guess.”

He motioned Stephen in, and he immediately saw what Quill had meant. It looked like an extremely localized teenage hurricane had stormed through; clothing haphazardly thrown over almost every fixture, half-open boxes of some kind of foodstuffs, torn-apart bits and bobs that Stephen assumed were associated with the craft in some way. It was larger than the other cabins, if only slightly, and Quill flopped down on the double-sized bed in the far corner.

“So, what’re we talking about?” Quill asked, his voice stuffy and low like someone who knew they were in trouble and trying desperately to throw the blame off. “How I can’t hear myself think on this ship anymore?”

Stephen closed Quill’s door behind them, stood near the foot of his bed, crossed his arms. “I wanted to apologize.”

Quill’s head snapped up, utterly baffled (as though no one in his entire life had ever said those words in that order).

“This ship is your home,” Stephen continued, “and Tony and I—well, I might not be a paragon of social niceties, but even I can notice that we’ve made things awkward.”

Something bobbed in Quill’s throat, and his eyes dropped away to his feet. 

“I feel like we’ve been particularly insensitive to…” And Stephen’s voice trailed away, as though even he couldn’t put words to it. Someone you loved was taken away from you, in an unnecessarily cruel way that no one can make right, but we’ve come to make out all over your stuff. Quill’s head nodded loosely, intercepting the meaning in that pause. In the light, Stephen caught a glimpse of the tears that Quill had been trying so hard to hide building up in his eyes.

Loudly and without warning, the obtrusive intro to “Spice World” slammed through the ship, rumbling any loose components around them.

“C’mon, man!” Quill cried out, slamming a fist to the nearest flat surface, eyes full of threatening tears.

“FRIDAY, can you turn it down, please?” Stephen asked, adding, with a roll of his eyes: “This is _Doctor Handsome_ , and we need a moment.”

“Acknowledged, Doctor Handsome,” FRIDAY replied (and Stephen swore that she’d picked up more than a fair share of Tony’s snark, that there was some satisfaction even _she_ got from his little nickname). “Volume down, but I can’t promise the Boss won’t turn it back up on you.”

Quill managed to laugh through his tears, wiping his face in an exaggeration motion to clear away any that had escaped. “Do you guys, like, try extra hard to be annoyingly good together?” He was avoiding the subject, diverting attention, most definitely not looking up from his shoes. But they’d opened the box, there was no closing it back up again. And Stephen wasn’t leaving until his captain was no longer choking back his tears. He took a seat at the foot of the bed, following no protestation on his approach.

“Quill,” Stephen said. And began again: “Peter.”

Quill’s head shot up, accusatory at first—dampened by his wet eyes, the way he stubbornly shoved his tears away. But his head dropped back down, sniffling.

“It’s just—” Quill said, stifled another hard jag of tears in his chest and started over. With the box open, it all began to spill out. “He brought us all back. Stark, with the glowing rocks of destiny, or whatever. And I thought—I thought maybe when we all got un-dusted, she’d—”

His mouth twisted, fighting the emotion trying so desperately to burst out of him.

“Thanos killed her to get the soul stone. He killed his own fucking daughter.” Quill’s sadness morphed for just a moment into righteous anger. More than killing billions in a second with a snap of his fingers, this was the worst of it; those Thanos killed with his bare hands. “And with all of us in the soul stone, I know—I _know_ —I heard her voice. So I thought, when Stark brought us all back… maybe I’d get _her_ back, too.”

Stephen’s hand was solid when he settled it on Quill’s shoulder. He’d expected Quill to shy away, snap back up and deny everything written on his face. But he didn’t. The sob finally hit Quill, hit him _hard_ , and the sound was awful. Close, in the small bunk, and absolutely unlike the Peter Quill that Stephen had come to know. He sniffled piteously, tucked a fist to his brow and buckled into it.

He melted further into his tears, hiding his face in one of his hands and just letting it happen. His whole body sagging with the release of pent-up emotion—flooding out of him in one looming wave and a line of terrible, hitching sobs. Finally let himself cry.

This wasn’t like Wanda in the Mirror Dimension, not at all. Hers had been tears of frustration, of rage—scarlet energy whipping all around her like an angry storm, screaming out at the unfairness of the world that had taken so much from her. 

This was misery. Abject, vulnerable sadness that Quill had tried so hard to hide behind a cracking, lighthearted veneer. 

Stephen kept his tight-lipped silence through it. Still gripping Quill’s shoulder, just let him have it all out. The sad, miserable noises dropping out of Quill like the tears from his face. He was shaking under Stephen’s fingers, the effort of holding back his sadness taking it out of him. But, eventually, his breath slowed—caught, struggled, but finally came out even. Face red from crying, but probably also embarrassment. 

After a brief, loaded silence, Stephen only said: “Tell me about her.”

Quill sniffled back his tears, cleared his face of all evidence before he began.

“She beat me up the first time I saw her,” he said, a wistful tone coming through his sadness like sun through the clouds. And when it made the corner of Stephen’s mouth twitch into a smirk, Quill’s face broke—a laugh left him, burdened by the remnants of a sob. “And then we both landed in jail. Not a hot first date.”

They walked slowly through Quill and Gamora’s history, lingering on little details here and there (sharing the Walkman, dancing under the Knowhere sky; holding each other, funeral fireworks lighting up her face; the first and only time she said that she loved him). From first tentative steps to the full dance, budding respect and friendship to love. And Quill’s voice caught at several points, but he didn’t break a second time.

Quill touched a tiny control panel by the head of his bunk, and the display there flashed on. The picture took time to focus, as if he’d turned on an old tube television—but once it had, Stephen saw Quill’s entire crew (minus Nebula) gathered at the nose of the new ship. He saw Drax with an arm around Mantis’ shoulder, holding her slightly too hard for comfort; Rocket leaning on a young Groot, who had barely managed to glance up for whoever was taking the picture; and in the center, Quill and a young woman with green skin.

Quill tapped the screen, which refocused and zoomed in to encompass only his and her faces—both of them smiling (his was too wide, childish but enthusiastic; hers even and happy, eyes lingering on the side of his face as though she didn’t want to be caught staring). She seemed lovely, but hard. Kind, but wary.

“That’s her,” Quill said, throat hoarse. His eyes took in every inch of that picture, almost like he was seeing it for the first time. “She wasn’t just beautiful, she was _so_ smart. And she kicked so much ass. And I don’t have a frickin’ clue why, but she loved _me_. Some fat, clueless idiot.” He rubbed a weary hand over his face, shoulders shaking with another stifled jag.

Stephen’s gaze lingered on Gamora’s face, the adoration radiating off of her—obvious enough for even a complete stranger to see. He’d seen that stolen look a thousand times. The furtive, loving stare when Tony didn’t think he could see him watching.

“I think that,” Stephen began, and his voice brought Quill’s attention back, “maybe the people that love us see more than we think of ourselves.”

Quill gestured at himself, incredulity pinched on his sad, red face. Stephen didn’t let him have the self-jab.

“You’re a good captain, Peter. They know that. She knew that.” 

Quill shrugged dismissively. “I dunno.”

Strangely enough, Stephen knew exactly what Quill was talking about. It was easy to see why anyone with half a brain would fall in love with Tony Stark; he was a literal genius, gorgeous, equal parts snarky and kind. And for _some reason_ , he’d given his heart to Stephen Strange. Some dirt poor, antagonistic, standoffish jerk who lived in a museum and occasionally had to run off and stymie the efforts of encroaching demons from realms unknown.

“I have no idea why Tony loves me,” Stephen admitted suddenly, his gaze locked on the far corner of the room (his far-off expression stark and sad).

A pitiful laugh burst out of Quill—not washing away his sadness, but lifting it for just a moment. Stephen swung his head back to face him, still partially lost in thought.

“Are you kidding me, dude?” Quill asked, waving a hand at Stephen’s confused person. “You got cheekbones for days! And that sweet cape! You do that… that…” He waved his hands in an imitation of Stephen’s arcane gestures. “That boom-boom-woosh thing!”

A smile cracked on Stephen’s face, even with his brow still bent in disbelief. “Cheekbones for days?”

“Hey, I’m mature enough to admit you’re a good-looking guy. Not my type,” Quill added stiffly, shifting his shoulders. And, Stephen realized, the mood had shifted as well. Quill had settled, no more tears shining on his face. “Maybe they see something we don’t see, huh? With Stark, it’s gotta be like, something _no one_ else can see. Literally, I can’t see it.”

Stephen and Quill fell into quiet, subdued laughter—a much more welcome sound, echoing warmly in Quill’s small cabin.

“So, tell me about yours,” Quill said, easing very slowly back into himself (eyes still red and hit with the occasional sniffle). “Your guy. You met him before he met you, right?”

Stephen nodded, stifled a grin, and he obliged. “He appeared in the Sanctum at ten-to-two on a Tuesday. He already knew who I was.”

He unfolded their convoluted story over the next twenty minutes. Quill barely interjected (laughed when Stephen pulled out his phone to share the first selfie he’d ever been party in, Peter grinning with an arm around his shoulder), asked for clarification on a few of the more tricky time travel aspects (“Wait, so were there two of him? When’d he, like, zip back into one guy?”).

“Okay, so, to me,” Quill said, a hand gesturing to the middle of his chest with a look of concentration on his face, “he likes you ‘cause you really put yourself out there for other people.”

Stephen chuckled, something small that seemed larger in the small cabin. “It comes with the territory.”

“No, not like… like Avengers putting yourself out there. I mean the coming back every day thing. You could’ve ditched him when he was being an asshat, or magic-blasted his face off—which I, personally, can get behind—”

“I think that’s called common decency,” Stephen smirked, interrupting that meandering train of thought.

“Huh?” Quill asked, scratching concernedly at the space under his ear.

Stephen stood, rolled his eyes with a familiar pull of a sardonic smirk. “If that were the case, I’d say the bar is _spectacularly_ low. But thanks.”

A real smile filled Quill’s face—subdued, but honest.

“You’re an okay guy, Strange,” Quill said, nodding firmly just once.

“My first name’s Stephen,” the sorcerer provided.

“Oh my _god_ , thank you,” Quill said very quickly, smacked his hand to his forehead. “I totally was gonna say Steve and I knew that wasn’t right.” After he let the moment of humor pass, his face fell again, acknowledging just what had happened between them. He cleared his throat, dropped his eyes. “Um. Thanks. Y’know, for…”

“I charge by the hour,” Stephen murmured, grinning when Quill’s face spasmed into something affronted. “I’m joking, Peter. I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“Wait, you’re a _real_ doctor?” Quill asked, surprise taking place of his offended glare in an instant. 

Quill arrived back on the bridge-slash-lounge with the return of the hop in his step, Stephen striding in just behind him. Slung an arm around Mantis’ shoulder and pulled her into a tight hug, shot his finger guns encouragingly at Nebula, gave Tony the friendly bird, and plopped back down into his captain’s chair—snapping along with the upbeat chorus of “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba.

Tony pulled up alongside Stephen, slid an arm around his waist with his gaze still occupied with squinting in Quill’s wake. 

Mantis looked brightly up at Stephen, her own big eyes wet with emotion—she must have read it off of Quill in their embrace, and her smile was just as warm and just as content.

“Thank you,” she said to Stephen, her voice trembling just slightly with the weight of that emotion, whatever Quill had shared with her.

Stephen nodded, wrangled his arm around Tony’s shoulders, smirking down at him. Tony glanced up, found himself being watched, and winked. And it struck Stephen so deeply for something so small. 

_The people that love us see more than we think of ourselves._ Stephen wondered, grinning stupidly down at Tony’s bright eyes, just what it could possibly be that Tony Stark saw in _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more I write Peter Quill, the more I love him, too...
> 
> okay so! I'm doing this series for my NaNoWriMo project this November, meaning updates will probably be happening at a better clip! hopefully! If for any reason anyone wants a writing buddy, my NaNo account is [TheShoelessOne](https://nanowrimo.org/participants/theshoelessone), feel absolutely free to friend me. Thanks so much for reading so far!


	6. trust circle

“You want me to do _what_?” Quill snapped.

“Stop the ship,” Tony said again, speaking more slowly as though to a toddler. “Did all the ‘70s Dad Rock make you deaf, or something?”

“If anything made me deaf, it’s your stupid—” Quill struggled for a moment. “—idiot music.”

“Good one,” Mantis said from over his shoulder, nodding seriously.

“Look, if you don’t stop the ship, I can’t run any tests,” Tony said, chopping a hand seriously through the air between them as he took a step closer. “And if I can’t run any control tests, I’m running into this anomaly thing completely blind.”

“If I stop the ship, we’re gonna be stuck together even longer, Stark,” Quill cut back in, lip curling in distaste. “ _No_ thank you!”

“I think a couple more hours with each other isn’t gonna get anyone killed,” Tony surged forward another step. “I’m gonna be outside the damn ship, you won’t even have to look at me!”

Quill laughed. “Super tempting.”

“Peter,” Stephen said from his position half-sitting on Tony’s commandeered table, and Quill looked up with a different expression altogether. “If you’re wrong, and the anomaly that took Thor and the others has nothing to do with any kind of sorcery, Tony’s scanners might be the only way to determine if—” He took a breath. The words ‘if anyone survived’ hung unsaid on his tongue, but their implication lingered. “—if we can learn anything from the anomaly.”

Quill’s mouth pressed into a thin, worried line. He shifted his weight, and his once-sure gaze faltered.

“So uh, your suit. It’s airtight? Got its own oxygen supply?” Quill asked, his brow lowered and dark.

“Do I _look_ like an amatuer?” 

Stephen and Quill rolled their eyes almost at the same time.

“Maybe, but I don’t want the magic guy to kick my ass if I get you killed in space,” Quill replied, stepped quickly out of the conversation and down the ladder to the loading bay. “Nebula! Slow it down to quarter speed, okay?” he shouted back up at them.

Tony gathered up the assorted gadgets he’d thrown together over the last handful of hours and pressed half of them into Stephen’s hands—he nearly dropped one in shock, caught by the hem of the cloak before it could hit the ground.

Stephen glanced at Nebula, who had (begrudgingly) headed to the helm. She took a seat in Quill’s chair, spinning just slightly until she could adjust the consoles to her height. She pressed a finger to her ear. “Slowing engines to quarter speed,” she said over what Stephen assumed was a communicator. “It will still be too fast for the Iron Man repulsors.”

Stephen levitated cautiously down the ladder after Tony and Quill, just in time to hear Quill answer in a thin, irritated tone. “I know it’s too fast! I don’t wanna slam on the breaks! Remember what happened last time?” He looked up at Tony and Stephen, and he winced. “ _That’s_ why we don’t move without seatbelts, by the way. Nearly splatted Mantis on the windshield last time we went full stop. Speaking of, there’s no harnesses down here, so, uh… hold on to something.”

The noise of the engines cut off almost completely, and the cloak’s quick thinking was all that kept both Stephen and Tony from smacking into the wall of the loading bay, cradling the both of them in its folds.

“Sorry, sorry,” Quill’s voice came from somewhere nearby. “Shoulda said something sooner. Everyone okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony assured himself, checked his limbs. “Thanks, Levi,” he breathed, let himself be placed back on the ground.

“That thing’s got a name?” Quill asked, eyeing the cloak up and down.

“Yeah,” Tony said enthusiastically. “I call ‘em Levi.” He held out a free hand, and the cloak gave it a smack—almost, but not quite, like a high-five.

“It’s the Cloak of Levitation, and it’s nearly two-thousand years old,” Stephen said with a growing smirk.

“Oh, so almost as old as you, then,” Tony quipped, flashing Stephen a pretty grin.

“Asshole,” Stephen breathed through an impossible smile.

“Cradle-robber,” Tony countered. He pointed at the component the cloak had caught in its hem. “Can I have that one?”

With two taps of the arc reactor housing unit, the Bleeding Edge armor spread out over Tony’s chest and limbs and head, encased him completely. He held out his right hand, palm up, and pointed at the wrist. 

“There. Please,” he added when the cloak waited for proper politeness. Its collar nodded, and it lifted off of Stephen’s shoulders to press the node into the small aperture Tony had left for its attachment. Nanites completely sealed it into the armor, and Tony flexed his arm several times to be sure of complete coverage.

“Other one—you’ve got it, baby,” Tony said, voice muffled and metallic through the newly-formed helmet. Held out his opposite wrist and waited for Stephen to attach the second node as the cloak had done. Stephen lingered close, watching the nanites seal the suit cautiously. “Great,” Tony said, wriggling his other arm to be sure the seal was complete.

Stephen didn’t need to question whether Tony’s science was sound, or if his suit would hold out the vacuum of space. It didn’t keep the concern from sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“What d’you think?” Tony asked, hand on one hip as he turned and showed off the new hardware. “Kinda throws off my silhouette.”

“What’s it s’posed to do?” Quill asked, and he strode over to a nearby console on the opposite wall of the bay.

“More fine-tuned scanners,” Tony answered from behind the faceplate of the helmet. “The Bleeding Edge is more tactical than practical, so retrofitting isn’t out of the question. Bigger range, with these specs, so hopefully we won’t have to get as close as you did in your pod to get a read on this anomaly thing. _But_ ,” Tony added, waving a hand, “I won’t know for sure until I can test it on a control setting.”

“Stephen, hey,” Quill said from the control panel, pressing a series of inputs. “Back a step, there’s an airlock.”

They did as asked, and Quill slapped a hand to the panel, releasing a pale yellow translucent wall between them and the rear of the ship, as promised.

“Since when are you two on first name terms?” Tony murmured, leaning in as surreptitiously as Iron Man probably could.

“Since you landed in my Sanctum with all of the Infinity Stones,” Stephen replied just as softly, his eyes sliding over the smooth bowing of the armor—the man underneath it. The suit couldn’t narrow it’s eyes, but Stephen could practically feel Tony doing just that, and so he elaborated without needing to be asked. “Tones,” he said with a sigh. 

“Right, this isn’t me being jealous,” Tony interrupted, both armored hands up like a shield. “I mean, I hope not. Jealous of Quill would be a new low.”

“I can hear you, asshat,” Quill shouted across the bay.

“Tony, just listen, please,” Stephen continued, smirked at Quill. “I know you remember just how much of an asshole I was when I first met you.”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything,” Tony began, but Stephen cut him off with a minute wave of his hand.

“And then I wasn’t. Because I met you.” His gaze melted, just slightly, into a sappy little smirk.

“So, you opening up to everyone else is my fault?” Tony asked, an insufferable snarky tone detectable even through the helmet.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Stephen replied, stuck staring and smirking.

There was a quiet sigh in his ear, and when Stephen turned, he realized that it had been Quill—who had deftly hidden a weary smirk and held a hand to his ear. “Okay, Nebula, I think we can do that full stop now. Make sure Mantis has her harness on.”

“Harnesses secure,” Nebula answered after a moment. “Full stop engaging.”

They were ready, this time, when the engines completely shut off. Stephen with a hand on a tether overhead, and Tony with his arm around Stephen. All forward momentum lost, flaps engaged to completely halt their movement in frictionless space. There was a clunk, followed by Nebula’s reassurance that the anchor had been dropped—whatever an anchor in space entailed.

“Okay,” Quill said with a heavy sigh—and with a final series of inputs on the control panel, the loading ramp deployed. There was a grinding noise to the back of the ship, and both of their heads snapped around to watch the rear hatch open with a hiss of air lost into the vacuum, revealing a wide swath of space behind them. Vast and dark, pinpricked with trillions of shimmering stars—a glittering arm of their galaxy sparkling like freshly-fallen snow, a nearby nebula coloring the darkness with a swirling prism of light.

Sure enough, the wall that Quill had thrown up protected them from being sucked into the void (Stephen’s memory plucking out the vision of nearly following Thanos’ emissary into cold space, the thin strand of Peter’s webbing the only thing keeping him from flying out into the void to his death).

Tony gripped Stephen’s hand, but somehow even with the armor encasing his fingers, the touch was still careful.

“If this takes more than, like, an hour,” Quill grumbled, “I’m leaving you behind.”

At the narrowing of Stephen’s eyes, Quill very minutely shook his head in reassurance.

“Good luck kiss?” Tony asked to bring Stephen’s eyes back to him, cocking his head.

“Helmet off,” Stephen demanded, tight smile barely hidden.

Instead, Tony only held a metal finger to the cheek of the helmet.

And, after a moment’s contemplation, Stephen leaned in and left a lingering kiss just where he’d indicated.

“Tony Stark’s loss,” Stephen murmured softly. And no snarky backtalk followed, so Stephen filled the dumbfounded silence. “Do you need my help with anything?”

“Uh,” Tony began, holding the syllable for a very long time.

“One hour, Stark!” Quill said sharply from somewhere much closer than he’d been just a moment before. Pointed to a nonexistent watch on his wrist before heading back toward the ladder. “We’re stationary, so you won’t have to catch up or anything. Just don’t waste any time, okay? It’s _my_ crew on the line.”

“Right, yeah,” Tony stuttered, shook the tension out of his limbs with a hard sigh. “Be right back,” he said specifically to Stephen, thumb and forefinger forming a little circle. Stephen copied the motion.

Tony backed through the air barrier, which wobbled slightly as he moved through it. Lingered for a moment, then nodded. 

“All systems looking good,” he said out loud. “FRIDAY, you with me?” She seemed to reply in the affirmative, and Tony nodded. “Okay, I want you recording all this data. Oh, and cue up the next song on the playlist.”

“ _Stark!_ ” Quill shouted, his face going terribly pale. But it was too late. Tony blasted off into the darkness, and FRIDAY made the affirmation on the ship this time. There was a momentary hiss of dead air before the music blasted through the ship. Stephen prepared a wince, and—

More Bee Gees, “You Should Be Dancing”. Tony really _had_ banked rather hard on disco.

“Huh. This one’s okay,” Quill said, his posture relaxing instantly. Flashed a boyish smile at Stephen, tapping one leg to the beat. “Now, if it something you can dance to, I can get behind it.”

“It’s just about the only thing disco is good for,” Stephen said through a laugh. “Go on, Peter. I’ll stay here for when he gets back.”

“Well,” Quill said, shifting and patting his pockets until he found what he wanted. “Here.” He handed Stephen a device that didn’t look incredibly dissimilar from a bluetooth headset for a phone. “Stick it in your ear. We’ve all got one, and it’s hooked up to the ship, too. Stark’s probably hacked his way into our system, or whatever. So you can talk. But, um… keep it cool. It’s all connected, and I don’t wanna hear your weird flirting more than I already have to.” Quill settled into a smirk, and Stephen adjusted the communicator in his ear as instructed—held a hand to his ear as Quill had done. 

“Tones, can you hear me?” Stephen asked.

“Hey, baby!” Tony’s chipper voice flooded into him, pulling a bright, unconscious smile to his face. “Quill, you finally teaching this old man how to use technology?”

“What the hell does that mean?” Quill asked Stephen, shaking his head with a confused, animated squint.

“Nothing,” Stephen was quick to tell him. “I’m listening, Tony, tell me what you’re seeing,” he said into the communicator, and nodded once at Quill. “We’ll be fine, Peter.”

After Quill had gone topside, Stephen stood by the barrier and looked out into that void behind them. Watched the precise movement of the Iron Man armor, using the repulsors to stabilize his position and move in careful triangulation around the ship.

“It looks a lot nicer in space than it does on the Compound’s front lawn,” Tony said over the com, the grin evident even in his voice. “Hold still, Steph, I’m doing a preliminary scan of the ship.”

“How’s that a nickname for Stephen?” Quill’s voice came over the com, incredulous and chewing around something.

“The first five letters of Stephen,” Mantis replied matter-of-factly in her dreamy voice.

“Okay, yeah, but,” Quill’s voice pressed. “It’d be ‘Steef’ then, right? Not ‘Steff’? Steef-en. Steff-en. See?”

“I’m gonna find a way to make this a private channel,” Tony grumbled. “FRIDAY?”

“Afraid not, Boss,” she replied. “My processing power in this node isn’t enough to gain control of the entire system.”

“Later, then,” Tony announced. 

And a good swath of nothing happened for nearly twenty minutes. Tony slowly increased the range of his scanners, adjusted his limits, tested and prodded and joked over the comms. And Stephen kept him verbal company, resting in the lotus position on the floor of the loading bay—eyes closed and focused on the sound of Tony’s voice. 

There was a silence, and it was louder than any noise any of them could have made. A word fell half-formed off of Tony’s lips, turned to a stutter, and halted completely.

“Tony?” Stephen asked into the silence.

“Yeah,” Tony replied haltingly, hesitated, heavy.

Stephen came to his feet, looking through the airlock and up into the darkness. He didn’t see Tony from the limited view this angle gave him. He pressed a hand to his ear. 

“Tony, where are you?” he asked, trying to find another viewport through which to find any indication of Tony’s position.

The only reply was a loud gulp of hard breath on the other end. It tightened in Stephen’s own throat, and a wave of concern surged through him in an instant. High alert, call to action.

“Peter!” Stephen shouted up the ladder, the cloak lifting him off his feet—Stephen physically restraining it from trying to push them through the airlock barrier. “I need a space suit. Right now!”

“What?” Quill asked, peering down the ladder at him, one of Tony’s tools held loosely in one of his hands.

“Is something wrong?” Mantis asked, her pale, too-expressive, worried face appearing beside Quill’s as if entering a picture frame. 

“ _Space suit_ ,” Stephen snapped, his limbs shaking with the adrenaline suddenly pulsing through him with his frantic heartbeat. “Now!”

Stephen’s urgent tone shocked Quill into movement, and he dropped down the ladder without any more prodding. Stephen turned as Quill rushed by him, was just in time to catch a disk that Quill had thrown to him. He caught it deftly, turning it over with a disconcerted look.

“It’ll form around you, just slap it on somewhere,” Quill said in a rush. “What’s going on?”

Stephen didn’t answer—didn’t want to put Tony’s trauma on display for everyone on that ship, not when he wasn’t present to defend himself. So he pressed the disk to his chest, and with a single tap, a wave of translucent material crawled across his skin (his clothes, even the cloak). Like stepping into a bath full of cold gelatin, he thought with a brief shiver.

“Hey, wait—” Quill called, and he stepped quickly to Stephen’s side. “I’m not being fresh, okay? I’m just—” He fought with the cloak for just a moment, held up what was quite obviously a harness and a tether. “This is gonna help!” he shouted quite loudly at the cloak, waggling the harness harshly in its direction.

It didn’t need any more convincing, and pulled away from Stephen’s hip to reveal his belt (the corner of one hem even pointing frantically at that belt as if Quill needed directions). 

Quill clipped the harness to Stephen’s belt, tugged on it to be sure he was secure. Slapped a hand on Stephen’s wrist to pull his attention. Their eyes met, briefly, and Quill’s throat bobbed with words he didn’t say. Just nodded, and pushed Stephen three steps away. Slammed a button and threw up another airlock between them.

Stephen couldn’t feel the pressurization outside of the borrowed suit, but he did feel the sudden tug of the vacuum from behind him. 

And he was in space. 

For just a moment, eyes blinking and dumbfounded, he felt memories of Kamar-Taj stick their claws into him and hold on—the Ancient One blasting him soaring through space and dimensions unknown at incomprehensible speed, struck by both the horror and the beauty of it all. Weightless, helpless, but surrounded by sights that almost no one on the planet was privileged enough to see.

Then, he was back. Floating absently through absolute nothingness, his only connection to another human a thin strand of cable clamped to his belt. His shaking fingers took hold of the harness, hastily added a spell to secure the connection, and he looked up. That incredible swath of stars met him, and outlined against the bright arm of the galaxy was the unmistakable outline of the Iron Man suit. 

Without a second thought, Stephen summoned the energy to push himself away from the ship, hands glowing.

Tony was frozen, head tilted up to look at those same stars that had knocked the breath out of Stephen. Slight tremors in Tony’s arms were the only outside indication that anything was wrong at all—and, if he had been wearing his older, clunkier armor, Stephen probably wouldn’t have been able to see even that.

With an internal, panicked little laugh, Stephen realized he’d never had to assist with a panic attack in zero gravity. 

“Tony,” Stephen said over the communicator as the cloak halted his upward momentum an arms length away from Tony’s stricken form, tried to get a grip on the nearest shoulder—only to have his arm shoved away hard.

In the noiselessness of space, there was no tell-tale sound of repulsors charging. But there was no mistaking the flat-palm gesture; pointed right at Stephen, light flaring. He could have easily defended himself, thrown up a shield and bashed Tony’s arm away. But he didn’t.

No blast followed. Only the choking, heavy breathing of Tony’s panic in his ear. His arm shook, but didn’t recoil.

“I’ve got you,” Stephen breathed as evenly as possible. He cautiously took the hand Tony had thrown out in his defense. Held it firmly. Brought Tony’s hand close, pressed the palm flat against his chest, just over his heart—held it there with both of his own. “Feel me breathing?”

The helmet nodded weakly. “Five seconds,” Tony’s reedy voice said over his communicator before Stephen could, already working on a shaking breath. 

“I’m connected to the ship,” Stephen told him in between breaths. “Quill is on the other end. We’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”

Tony’s breath wavered, sliding into a weak, manic bout of laughter. “God, this is pathetic,” he groaned, head dropping. “I had the fucking Infinity Stones on my hand, but I can’t sit out here in dead space and—and—”

Stephen gently reminded Tony to breathe through his words, which he did. And with another trembling breath, Tony pulled Stephen against him. Held him tightly, armored arms wrapped reassuredly around him. And Stephen held him back, connecting them in a tight circuit. 

“Tell me about the scanners,” Stephen urged, anything to get his mind somewhere else but the cold void surrounding them.

“Worked like a charm,” Tony muttered inside the suit, still tinny over the communicator. “Scanned the ship, saw all your signatures inside. Got the range out to a few thousand meters before I—” The iron fingers gripped Stephen even tighter. 

It struck Stephen that it was offhandedly romantic—the idea of drifting in silent space together, arms entwined almost like they were dancing. And if they were two different people, maybe it would have been. But they were Stephen Strange and Tony Stark, and they were getting the hell back on that ship.

“Are you okay to move?” Stephen asked, still tucked into Tony’s hard embrace.

“Yeah, please,” Tony muttered, not lifting his head.

Stephen turned to signal Quill, but found that they were already being reeled in. So he held tight, and only moments later, the both of them had landed safe on the floor of the loading bay (a jumble of limbs, shaking but safe). Quill tapped the control panel, the bay pressurized to meet them, and the ramp closed firmly behind them—sealed out the cold visage of the cosmos.

The airlocks lifted, and Quill rushed in to meet them, pulled Stephen to his feet as he disengaged his space suit. Mantis and Nebula had arrived from topside, an entire entourage to meet them.

“Hey,” Quill breathed, threaded both hands back through his own hair (stuck straight up, and Stephen nearly laughed; he knew exactly what a worried brother looked like, because he’d seen that look on his own face hundreds of times). “You guys okay? What the hell was that all about?”

Nebula brusquely lifted Tony to stand and inspected him.

“Was there a malfunction with your suit?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

Tony’s helmet melted away in an instant, and Stephen found that getting stabbed in the chest might have been preferable to seeing the cold anguish on Tony’s face. It had a similar effect on his breathing, which caught hard in his throat.

And before he realized he’d done anything, Stephen was standing between Tony and Nebula, a hand pushing her firmly (angrily) away. His chest was heaving almost as hard as Tony’s, the fist unoccupied with keeping Nebula at bay shaking hard at his side and glowing with the runes of a shield.

“Don’t touch me!” Nebula snapped, wrenching her shoulder away from him, looking him up and down—assessing a threat, baring her teeth like a wounded animal.

“Woah, woah,” Quill called out, and now _he_ was between _them_. “Chill out, both of you! Everyone’s okay!” He paused, narrowed eyes turning to Tony. “Is everyone okay?”

Tony’s hand was no longer covered in armor when Stephen felt the fingers tighten on his upper arm. A placating gesture, filling him with warmth and reassurance. He was back. 

“Can we sit down, please?” Tony asked, his voice haggard. 

Without hesitation, the cloak wrapped itself around Tony, and hoisted him up and out of the loading bay.

“That thing is so weird,” Quill said under his breath, half in awe and half apprehensive. But he was the first to move to follow, climbing the ladder after them.

The cloak had brought Tony to sit on the table of his workstation, draped itself protectively around him—its collar popped up threateningly when Quill was the first to approach (his hands shot up in surrender when it singled him out). Tony didn’t meet any of them in the eye as they gathered near him, not even Stephen, who stood beside his perch on the table with concern practically vibrating off of him.

Nebula crossed her arms, a dark scowl on her face, and plopped hard onto a bench seat across the room. Mantis took the seat beside her, huge eyes brimming with concern and her fingers twisting worriedly in her lap. 

Quill paced around the table once, and (hands ruffling through his hair again) moved to a nearby panel in the wall beside where the two women were sitting. Hit the compartment hard enough for a small door to pop open. Punched in a code on the panel inside and, a moment later, came to Tony’s side holding a metal cup full of liquid.

“Here, uh,” Quill said, holding out the cup like he was embarrassed to be making the offering at all. “It’s the closest to coffee I think this thing can make.”

Tony took the cup, looked down into it (the steam curling into his nonplussed, confused face). And he finally laughed. Soft, tight laughter buckled out of him, settled his tight shoulders and loosened his posture.

“Thanks,” Tony croaked, and immediately went for a drink.

Stephen lingered close, a hand resting lightly on Tony’s knee, eyes searching for any further signs of distress.

“I hate space,” Tony’s voice cracked. Hung his head, took another long drink. “And this tastes like hot mud,” he laughed.

“I said it was close, not good,” Quill replied, shifting awkwardly and not looking up from his feet, a little put-out. “So, like… space freaks you out?”

When Quill’s eyes ticked up, he was looking at Stephen. Just for a moment, there was an acknowledgement in his eyes. Quill gave him a solid little nod—something friendly, something knowing.

Tony didn’t answer immediately, and Quill took the opportunity to hop up onto the table beside him. And Stephen realized what Quill was doing. It was Stephen sitting beside him on his bunk, talking everything out until the tears had dried on his face. He was trying to do the same thing for Tony, and by extension, for Stephen. It was a far more sentimental move than Stephen would have ever expected from Quill—brash Peter Quill, stubborn Peter Quill (emotional and self-conscious Peter Quill, the Peter Quill that he’d seen sacrifice himself for his friends over and over; maybe he’d underestimated Peter Quill completely).

“I, uh,” Quill began, a hand rubbing at his opposite arm in a sheepish move. “I hate spiders. And anything that kinda looks like a spider. Anything _vaguely_ spider-like.”

Tony’s head popped up, and he hit Quill with a look of utter confusion.

“I saw this huge one in my room one time,” Quill continued despite it, and he held up his hands to demonstrate just how big he estimated the creature had been (basketball-sized, if his imagination was to be believed). “It was like, three in the morning and I woke up and saw it crawling on the ceiling right over my face. And when I tried to move, it serious dropped—” With one hand spread wide to imitate said spider, he slapped it hard to the front of his face, pulling a terrified, animated face underneath. “I screamed like a little girl. And I think it scarred me for life.”

There was a noise from the bench, and Stephen realized that Nebula was laughing. It was a hard and stilted noise, as though she were still coming to understand how to do it. Her smile was a harsh cut on her face, and when she showed her teeth, it was still almost threatening. But she was laughing.

“Well, okay,” Quill uttered (the emotion on his face somewhere between hurt and amused). “What about you, Nebula?”

“I fear nothing,” she told him, still choking on a laugh. “What could possibly scare me now that all I love is dead and all I hate is gone?”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be so dramatic,” Quill pushed, rolling his eyes. “I bear my freakin’ soul and I can’t get anything from you?”

“I—” Mantis began, twisting her hands together when all eyes turned to her. “I am afraid, too. Sometimes afraid of my own empathy. Of feeling nothing but the worst emotions.” She took a strengthening breath, affirmed her conviction. “When I was with Ego, all I was able to feel was his monstrosity, his anger, filling me up all of the time. The bad feelings were worse than no feelings at all. I do not want to feel those things, even if it means I will never feel anything again.” She hung her head, eyes darting in growing embarrassment.

And Tony levered himself off the table, walked the few steps to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. Her antennae perked up, as did her head, and she met his gaze with growing warmth.

“I flew into a portal,” Tony said, his hand still anchored on Mantis. “It was cobbled together from the space stone, and Loki meant for it to let Thanos’ crew through to destroy Earth. Or enslave it, whatever,” he added with a loud clearing of his throat. “And I flew a nuclear warhead up into it.”

Surprisingly, the Guardians said nothing. So Tony continued.

“I thought I was gonna die,” he said solidly despite the way his breath caught. “I looked that war fleet in the face, nuke in my hands, and thought that was how I was gonna die. Just me and the goddamn cold void of space all around me. Didn’t get to say any goodbyes, didn’t have the time.” His eyes lingered briefly on Stephen’s, dropped away. “And now every time I look up at the stars, I’ve got to fight off the feeling that I’m about to get blown up in an atomic flash.”

Silence followed, but it wasn’t cold or hard or awkward. Considering the company, Stephen almost expected it to be. But that silence was heavy with respect, of all things.

“But you made it,” Nebula said, her once rough voice calmed. “The first man from your world to have a glimpse of Thanos, and you lived.”

Tony sucked in a strong breath, and he nodded.

Nebula dropped her eyes, and whatever mirth she’d gained from Quill’s story of childhood spider-related trauma drained out of her. “For the longest time, I feared my father’s retribution. His punishment for failure. That I would never feel love or acceptance, only pain. And once I had that love, I feared that it would be taken from me.” She swallowed, frowned. “It was.”

“Your sister?” Tony asked, after a heavy pause.

“You show strength in admitting weakness, Stark,” Nebula told him with a hard nod. “It’s something that _she_ taught me, not Thanos. It’s fair I do the same. I…” She chewed on the word, and spat it out begrudgingly, “apologize.”

“You’re not gonna hear _that_ every day,” Quill said appraisingly. And then: “Stephen?” Quill tilted his head just slightly to get the sorcerer in his sights.

“You don’t want to know,” Stephen answered.

“Hey, Nebula did hers,” Quill pushed. “You’re in the freakin’ sharing circle, c’mon.”

Stephen sighed heavily, ran a hand back through his hair, and took the seat beside Quill that Tony had vacated to comfort Mantis. 

“Dormammu,” Stephen said quietly. Tony’s eyes hit him from across the room—knowing, suddenly, what he was about to say, and beaming wordless adoration at him for it.

“Do-what-now?” Quill asked, his face bent in confusion.

“I faced a creature called Dormammu,” Stephen reiterated, voice low and purposeful, “whose dominion was the Dark Dimension and whose sole purpose was to consume. He wanted the Earth. I didn’t let him have it.” The memories of nightmares past beat on the insides of his lungs, but he spoke through it (more roughly than his usual cadence). “But it was at the cost of dying. Hundreds of times. Thousands. I can’t remember how many times he killed me. Some of them slowly, over years and—” He swallowed harshly. And he realized that his hand wasn’t shaking, because Tony had strode across the room sometime during his words and had trapped it firmly with both of his own. It filled him with a bright strength, which he used to push past the ache in his chest. “Well, when you can’t fight an interdimensional threat, you can trap it in a time loop until you’ve annoyed it enough to leave the Earth in peace.”

They were all staring. Stephen had had his fair share of that since he’d started dating Iron Man, but this was different. Not the volleyed questions from paparazzi, not the clandestine cell phone snaps from across the street or the quiet whispers and pointing. This was something else completely, something he absolutely wasn’t prepared for. 

Wonder. _Respect_.

“Wow, dude,” Quill breathed through a disbelieving, airy laugh. “You’re a total badass.”

Stephen deflated into an honest laugh, halfway to a sigh, and gripped Tony’s hand back in reply. 

“Okay, trust circle time was great,” Tony said obtrusively, clapped his hands together once. “When’s dinner? No, wait. _What’s_ dinner?” he clarified, looking prematurely disgusted. 

And Stephen watched as Quill hopped off the table, arms moving as he matched Tony quip for quip, the snark pulling up one corner of his mouth to match—both Quill and Tony having eased into something less than antagonistic, something closer to friendly. The nudging and the verbal prodding reminded Stephen very much of the early days (hours) of teaching Tony how to summon a shield, their back-and-forth evolving from angry jabs to banter. 

Tony turned in the middle of Quill’s muddled sentence. Turned to Stephen, a welcome grin on his face, and beckoned him with an outstretched hand. The reflections of horrible memories were gone from his eyes, left clear and shining in the wake of their retreat. Stephen sighed, relaxed, and joined them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is... the longest chapter ever...


	7. never have I ever

The light cycle ticked on overhead, dim and buzzing just slightly. Stephen shifted in the embrace of the cloak, only to have Tony’s arms tighten around him. No nightmares, Stephen mused, settling his fingers protectively on the back of Tony’s neck. Couldn’t maneuver out from under Tony’s body, so he waited. Waited until those lights and the growing noise of movement outside the cabin stirred Tony from sleep.

“Better?” Stephen asked without needing to clarify.

Tony nodded, snuck a kiss to Stephen’s neck before he unburrowed himself and rolled out of the cloak hammock.

Stephen spent the day running over his spells. Levitating absently in the lounge as everyone else moved around him, hands in odd arcane positions as he practiced the movements he would need for investigating the anomaly. Tony sat by him on the cold floor, making any last-minute adjustments to the new scanners and chatting up Stephen at intervals to be sure the both of them stayed focused. 

An orange ring popped into existence around them, and Tony jumped (slightly) at its appearance. It shimmered, plastered with runes—not entirely unlike the shield spell, at first glance. But these runes were most definitely Asgardian, and Tony was quick to point it out as he stood and walked the interior circumference of the circle.

Mantis lingered nearby, and Stephen beckoned her closer with a nod. She prodded once at the runes, skittered back when they sparked at her, and tried on a nervous laugh.

“This is pure energy, borrowed from other realms of existence,” Stephen told her, not breaking his concentration or his stance. “It’s a part of the spell I’ll be using to prod into the nature of your anomaly.”

“This will help find the others?” Mantis asked, again stepping close to the ring. 

Stephen took a breath, and he banished the spell; stepped out of the cloak and to the ground. “I hope. I won’t know until we’re there.”

Mantis nodded ruefully, and her eyes dropped. “I hope,” she repeated.

“ _Part_ of a spell?” Tony picked up on instead, leaning close to the sorcerer.

Stephen nodded. “Depending on the size of the anomaly…”

“Right,” Tony muttered, ruffling his own hair. “Bigger the spell, bigger the bang.” He sighed with his entire body, shaking out the tension that had started to build in his frame.

For hours, Stephen prodded at the spell—tweaked its parameters, testing the length at which he could hold it steady; dropped it completely to run over the configurations themselves without pushing the energy through them.

“I could help,” Tony said without looking up (still leaning on the edge of response, ready to jump in and defend himself against protestation).

“I’ll need you using _your_ scanners,” Stephen said, also not looking away from his own work. “You’d be wasting everyone’s time if you tried to help with my spells.”

Silence pressed in on them, broken by the sound of Tony’s tools. “Right,” Tony said finally, though his tone indicated anything but satisfaction.

“I’m not trying to say that you can’t cast a spell,” Stephen clarified. And he finally dropped his hands to his side and came to a knee beside Tony on the floor. “And I think that, with practice, you could easily perform this spell on your own. But I _do_ need you to help me. Just not with this.”

Tony sighed, scrubbed his face with both of his hands. “Got it. Don’t try to out-magic the magic man. I need a break,” he added, standing quickly.

As if summoned, Quill appeared topside from the loading bay, purpose in his stride as he moved deftly around Tony and Stephen. Kicked at the side of his ship, and a panel popped open, spilled cool air and a cloud of fog, to reveal a series of chilled metal bottles. He picked one for each hand and spun to face the rest of them, a grin slapped onto his mouth.

“Okay, losers, everyone sit down,” Quill instructed. “Mantis, cups.” She bustled off to find enough, as asked. “There’s this ancient Earth ritual we call ‘Never Have I Ever’, and we are going to partake.”

“A drinking game? Seriously?” Tony asked, leaned on the table at the center of the lounge. “D’you know who you’re talking to?”

Nebula pulled a chair from the wall, slammed it down on the floor behind Tony. “Sit, Stark.”

“Is it a good idea for our captain to get drunk?” Stephen asked, sitting beside him in midair with the cloak’s assistance.

“And the navigator,” Nebula said roughly, grabbing a bottle all for herself—sat heavily on the bench seat in the corner.

“And me,” Mantis said giddily as she returned with metal cups for all of them, smiling with her entire face. “What do I do?”

“Ship morale,” Quill said quickly, pointing and smiling brightly at her before pouring her a drink. He poured another and offered it to Tony, pointing at him with his other hand, boyish half-grin fixed tentatively on his face. “What did they call the annoying guy that told jokes to the king and got his head cut off if he sucked?”

“The fool,” Stephen offered slyly.

“Ha ha,” Tony laughed balefully, reached for the proffered drink. “How about _never have I ever_ treated a guy trying to help like an asshole?”

Quill shrugged, took a swig as accused.

“I think you’d have to drink for that, Tones,” Stephen said, arms folded. 

“What?” Tony rounded on him, the overly-affronted look on his face pulling a little giggle out of Mantis. “Oh, you mean when a guy who just got his ass kicked by the universe’s angriest grape, then thrown across the galaxy and back in time by Satan’s rock collection, _might_ have been a little moody to the weird tall guy giving him sass?”

Stephen nodded, a slow smile coming to his face. “I should probably have one too, then.”

“That’s the spirit!” Quill crowed, handing Stephen his own drink. “Now, watch out. I play to win.”

“How do you _win_ Never Have I Ever?” Stephen asked after his drink, grimacing at the taste—a bit more on the rubbing alcohol side than bourbon.

“Uh, the last to pass out?” Tony posited, a welcome grin flicking to his face.

“Nebula, you gotta drink for that last one,” Quill said, hopped up to sit on the lip of the table.

“Why?” she asked through a frown. “When have _you_ ever tried to help me?”

“When, uh,” Quill began, scratching his head absently in thought. “Oh, when you wanted to stuff your face and we kept telling you it wasn’t ripe yet!”

“You had me captured and held prisoner in your hold,” she reminded him evenly.

“It’s totally the thought that counts,” Quill replied, holding up his glass to toast her.

Nebula rolled her eyes, but she popped the top off the bottle and took a solid drink.

“Do I…?” Mantis began, looking into her cup.

“Mantis, I seriously doubt you’ve ever been an asshole to anyone in your entire life,” Quill assured her. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you with one. Stephen?”

The sorcerer sighed, and assessed the situation in a blink. They were on autopilot, Quill had assured them that it would take three and a half days to reach the anomaly, and this was the last night they were going to spend with this crew. Regardless of what happened, whether they would find Thor and the missing Guardians—whether they would return victorious or return at all (Stephen banished the thought immediately)—they deserved this. After panic attacks and tears and this growing tentative friendship, they deserved a night to just exist.

“Never have I ever performed life saving surgery,” he offered.

“God, I keep forgetting you’re a real doctor,” Quill murmured, taking a swig.

“Does operating on DUM-E count?” Tony asked, swirling his drink.

“Life saving,” Stephen reiterated, pointed at Tony’s cup purposefully.

Tony mumbled something under his breath as he went for his drink. 

Mantis took a cautious sip, pulled a disgusted face. “This is terrible!” And handed her cup over for a refill when Quill passed the bottle around.

Nebula abstained, staring hard at the rest of them. “Do life saving measures on myself count for this question?” she asked, straight-faced.

“Uh,” Quill began, deferring to Stephen with a sympathetic wince.

“It probably counts even more than mine,” Stephen assured her. She nodded, and did not drink. He took a breath and added: “Your turn.”

“The point of this game,” she said, leaning slightly forward, “is to offer a situation in which you believe none of the other players have participated. If they have not, they drink, and you assumed correctly. If they have, they do not drink, and you learn something about your crewmates. Correct?”

“On the head,” Tony said.

“Then never have I ever lost a sister,” she said darkly.

The mood in the room turned instantly icy. Quill drank, never took his eyes off of her (his emotion so jumbled it was practically unreadable; some of that sadness Stephen had seen days before, followed by a strange protectiveness, and finally a low, glowing ire). Mantis dropped her eyes, took a small drink. Tony stoically took his drink, eyes on Stephen.

And Stephen didn’t raise his cup.

Tony blinked at him, and Nebula sat up straight in her seat.

“Babe, did you hear…?” Tony asked—but there was an uncertainty in his voice that Stephen knew. Knew Tony was so smart, and knew him well enough by now to know that something was wrong.

“I heard,” Stephen said, voice almost too low. “I haven’t told…” He cleared his throat, tried to apologize with his eyes before he began again. “Her name was April.”

Tony looked like Stephen had hit him with a full-speed eighteen-wheeler.

Stephen had only spoken out about his little sister twice in his life, and had managed to keep it a better secret than his sorcery. Once, when Christine was tidying and found an old polaroid he thought he’d hidden more thoroughly—she’d nearly had to physically wrangle the story from him. And the second when he’d opened up to Wanda, found that one of the things they had in common was a dead sibling. Now, suddenly, he had broached the long-hidden subject in front of a few near-strangers and the man he professed to love and trust.

“Stephen,” was all Tony said. He felt everything contained in that one word. Hurt, first and foremost, which mixed with more than a little bit of indignation—that he’d been deemed unworthy of such an important (secret) part of Stephen’s past until they found themselves playing a drinking game on a spaceship. Confusion, consternation, adoration. The last one struck Stephen oddly, and the way that he fumbled with it must have shown on his face.

He wasn’t angry, Stephen realized. He’d expected blustering accusations, calls for explanations, the demand of the full story immediately. But none of them came. There was an aching softness in Tony’s eyes that turned Stephen’s insides into warm honey, took his breath.

“Her name was April,” Tony repeated solidly. 

Hearing her name out of anyone else’s mouth was more moving than Stephen had ever expected it to be. He found a tight, shuddering breath, and he nodded. Wiped absently at the corners of his eyes, at any errant gathering of tears that he absolutely refused to let fall in mixed company.

It was Quill that broke the peace with a strange half-giggle, turning all attention to him.

“Dudes, we’re only two rounds in,” Quill chuckled helplessly. “Lighten _up_!”

Stephen’s face broke into a grin, and his laughter shattered the chilly silence that had swallowed them. Tony thankfully joined him—clapped a hand down on Stephen’s wrist and squeezed (brought Stephen’s fingers to his mouth, a fleeting kiss)—followed by the quiet tittering from Mantis, and something almost like an appreciative smirk on Nebula’s face. 

Quill nodded at Stephen once, raised his glass in a little salute.

He had _very much_ underestimated Peter Quill.

“Okay, Mantis,” Quill urged. “You go.”

“Oh,” she breathed worriedly. Tapped her fingertips to the cup in thought. “Never have I ever… eaten a Feresian swamp slug!” she said, head bouncing up with eagerness.

“Ew,” Quill uttered. “You ate a _slug_?”

“On some worlds, it is considered a delicacy,” Mantis informed them with a nod. “It was very disgusting,” she added with a toothy smile.

“Super gross,” Quill agreed, took a drink.

Even Nebula couldn’t talk her way out of this one, and the rest of them drank to match.

And so it went, for nearly an hour and a half. Talking, and drinking, and learning. Learning that, on Earth, Quill had left behind a big golden retriever named Buck; that Tony had never been allowed to keep pets, and built them instead. Nebula was older than everyone guessed, and Stephen even moreso. Mantis _could_ do impressions, and Stephen very much could _not_.

Some time during the evening, when the lights had dimmed at the end of their day cycle, Tony had asked FRIDAY to throw on some tunes. The music droned harmlessly in the background, hardly even garnering a reaction anymore. Quill tossed back another drink (having never had a swim in the Pacific Ocean) and hummed and drummed along tunelessly to songs he didn’t know. Nebula hiccuped, covered her mouth, and blushed—her face darkening in a way Stephen had never expected, coupled with an unexpected laugh from his own throat.

The drinking game eventually devolved into small talk, and the small talk into stories, and the stories into laughter and ribbing. Stephen wasn’t sure of exactly how much of Quill’s alcohol he’d partaken of, but the pile of empty bottles in the center of the table was growing almost exponentially. His vision wasn’t quite blurry, and Stephen wasn’t a lightweight by any means, but it was still the first alien liquor he’d ever consumed—his limits meant literally nothing.

He hadn’t realized that he’d been running his fingers absently through Tony’s hair until Quill pointed it out, who then _also_ pointed out that it was ‘super weird’ to see Stephen blush.

Stephen blinked several times, and he realized that he recognized the song that had just come on through the ship’s system. More than knowing who sang it and when it was released. He _knew_ this song, because it struck a chord deep down in his chest, the resonance thrumming through him in pleased recollection. His head snapped up, and he found Tony watching him, a little grin growing on his own face.

Tony winked broadly. And Stephen couldn’t help the useless laugh that struck him hard in the chest, the spread of the smile across his own face.

Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”, January 1984.

And then Tony stood, garnering the attention of everyone else around the table—conversation coming to a hard, full stop to watch. Tony extended his hand, beckoned Stephen in with waggling fingers.

“Wanna dance?” he asked, voice loose with drink.

Heat flooded through Stephen’s face, looking up at that confidence (that cock-sure look, the pretty arrogance mixed so easily with the still-building affection), and he really couldn’t help matching it with his own grin.

Tony pulled Stephen out of the cloak’s embrace, into his arms where they fit together so easily. Tony led, hand in the dip of Stephen’s back; turned into the beat, leaning close and biting off a pleased laugh before it could overtake him.

“This is our song,” Tony said almost too loudly, craning his neck to find Quill and the others staring. Stephen chuckled, ducked his head, let Tony lead him into the next loose step. “S’when he realized he was stupid in love with me,” he added, pointing at Stephen as if there was any question as to who in the room was stupidly in love with Tony Stark. Met Stephen’s unwavering gaze with red-faced adoration, poked that pointing finger into Stephen’s chest. “ _Smitten_ ,” he added, grin somehow still growing.

“Stupidly,” Stephen uttered, couldn’t stamp down the smile that had got its talons into him.

There was a wistful twist of something on Quill’s mouth, watching them for just a moment, before he came down off his perch on the lip of the table. A new enthusiasm had found its way into his limbs, and he waltzed up to Mantis’ side. Extended his hand, didn’t even have to ask before she gladly hopped up to meet him (wobbling on her skinny legs just once). Quill took her by the hands and guided her into a simple dance, spinning her once, much to her giddy amusement.

Tony threw his head back, laughing and leaning into Stephen’s arms.

Only half a minute later, Mantis stood on her toes to whisper something in Quill’s ear. He chuckled loudly, gave her a broad, incredulous look, and nodded with a shrug. She spun away from Quill’s arms, and she came to stand in front of Nebula’s seat. The other woman looked up, bewildered and half-drunk, brows furrowed and confused.

“What?” Nebula asked, her eyes going from Tony and Stephen to the woman standing (grinning) in front of her.

“I would like to include you in the dancing,” Mantis said kindly, and she held out a hand.

Stephen was sure that panic was something he would never see in Nebula’s eyes, but, he supposed as he pressed a long kiss to Tony’s forehead, there was a first time for everything.

Nebula shook her head harshly, looking at Mantis’ hand like it was a snake. “Never have I ever… danced before.”

(At which Quill only raised his cup and shouted “Everyone who’s dancing has to drink!” and pounded back a long swig of his own.)

“Then learn,” Mantis offered cheerfully, now beckoning with both hands. “Tony and Stephen are also not very good at dancing, you can learn from watching.”

“Wow, thanks,” Tony laughed obtrusively. 

It must have been a night for miracles. Or maybe they had all had just slightly too much to drink. Because Nebula steeled herself with one last drink from her bottle, set it aside, and she very tentatively let Mantis take her hand.

With both sets of their hands clamped together, Mantis carefully led Nebula to the moving synths and the soulful crooning—with the latter concentrating altogether too hard on their movements (frantically looking up at Tony and Stephen in attempts to study patterns and strategy). Quill leaned on the table in the middle of the two dancing couples, watching one and then the other with a silly, bemused sort of expression on his face. Like he was happy. Like he was proud.

“So, what about you, Stark?” Quill asked after a moment, pointing at him with his half-empty cup (sloshing the alcohol around inside maybe more than he had intended). “When’d you decided this dude was the guy for you? Like, head over heels and all that good fairy tale shit?”

The smile that had sat on Tony’s mouth went loose almost immediately, something softer as he looked brightly up into Stephen’s face. Stephen was sure that those eyes, with that much feeling in them, could break hearts (or fix them); launch ships (or destroy them). It certainly fixed a warm, buzzing something in Stephen’s muddled mind (deep in his chest, where his heart was hiding).

Stephen had let his slip on accident, spilling his proverbial guts when he thought Tony was sleeping. And he honestly wondered when it was that Tony had come to the conclusion. When had a ten year off-and-on-again relationship suddenly meant less than a man he’d known for hours? What had Stephen done to possibly change his mind?

Tony opened his mouth, and found himself interrupted by the sound of Nebula hitting the floor.

Quill jumped up immediately, his switch flipped incredibly easily into crisis mode. Mantis had both hands pressed to her face, terror alight like a fire in her sad eyes as he came to her side—down on one knee to check on the woman sprawled out on the floor at their feet.

“I think that I am drunk!” Mantis declared sadly, her face a wash of horrible revelation. “I think that I made her sleep, but it was an accident!” Her shoulders slumped horribly. “I have _ruined_ dancing for her.”

Stephen and Tony hovered nearby, still loosely holding one another in a frozen dance, and watched as Quill hefted Nebula up into his arms with a loud grunt at the effort.

“She’s fine, Mantis, I promise,” he said, voice strained under Nebula’s weight. “I’m gonna take her to her bunk. You go lay down, too, okay?”

“Okay,” Mantis mourned, dragged her hands down her face and hung her head before she trudged toward her bunk.

Quill adjusted Nebula’s weight in his arms. “All right, five minutes while I put her to bed. I’m gonna be back. I told you I play to win.” He pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at the two of them, and then back again. “Don’t start anything weird, I’m coming back,” he assured them one more time before he turned and he left.

As soon as Quill had disappeared, Tony broke into tight, bubbling laughter. Stopped himself by grabbing Stephen’s face in both of his hands and mashing them together in a quick, messy kiss.

“What were you going to say?” Stephen asked, his eyes trying their best to focus this close.

“That you’re drunk, wizard,” Tony said unevenly.

Stephen chuckled, and closed his eyes—leaned in until their foreheads were touching. “It’s been a really long time for this, too,” he murmured.

“Drinking games?”

“Drinking.”

He heard Tony’s lips part with a word unsaid, a little breath that turned into a laugh. “All those cosmic powers, and you’re done in by some… some space vodka.” He felt Tony’s fingers on his face, running back through his hair. “You’re lucky you’ve got a professional looking out for you, baby.”

The noise out of Stephen’s mouth was half laugh, half sigh—certainly more needy than he’d meant.

“Now, c’mon, that’s not fair,” Tony murmured, pressing his mouth high on Stephen’s cheek—breath warm, hazy with alcohol.

“Hm?” Stephen asked, leaning until he’d managed to find Tony’s lips with his own, and the lazy movement of their mouths together occupied all of the space in his brain. That slow, purposeful, searching—the soft sound of their breathing, synchronized. Stephen’s long fingers splayed out on the back of Tony’s skull, through his short hair, fixed them closer together, just _that much_ closer.

“Quill’s coming back,” Tony pulled back to say (Stephen felt Tony’s fingers digging into his hips, his lower back, gripping him tighter).

“Not if we go,” Stephen answered hastily, voice near-catching in his throat—still couldn’t open his eyes. “Tony,” he uttered. Suddenly there were only the trails of Tony’s dragging fingers—more important than anything on the ship, anywhere the ship was going, anyone or anything else.

“Shit,” Tony breathed, his mouth finding the spot just under Stephen’s jaw that brought the most interesting noise out of the sorcerer’s throat. “Hey, I thought you said we couldn’t—”

“I know what I said,” Stephen said very brusquely. And before they could chance Quill returning to finish their drinking game, he moved Tony and himself through the portal he’d thrown up without even opening his eyes. Practically waltzing together into their borrowed bunk, the only light shining from the sparks of the portal that Stephen closed succinctly behind him. “You’ll just have to keep quiet,” he muttered around the emotion bunching up in his throat.

“Oh,” Tony said, voice stark in the dark cabin—close and warm and—

And they came back together with a hard splash of need, fingers digging under clothes, shearing layers off in haphazard piles with learned efficiency. Still dancing, with searching hands and long, trailing kisses. 

“ _Oh_ ,” Tony said again, louder this time, and found Stephen kissing him hard to shush him.

“Quiet,” Stephen reminded him, noses touching in the dark, something small and intimate.

“Oh, screw that,” Tony groaned, and Stephen felt Tony’s hands lift away off his body. 

Without verbal warning, Tony slammed them into the Mirror Dimension—Stephen had enough experience to know without seeing exactly what had happened when a spell was cast on him, and to know the little ways in which the Mirror Dimension differed from their own. And Tony’s fingers had hardly left that arcane configuration before he latched back onto Stephen (who’d had appreciative words of praise on his tongue before Tony found it with his own instead). 

Flat on his back on the bunk, Tony’s pleasant weight pressing down on top of him with adoring insistence, Stephen realized that _he_ was quite a bit louder than he’d thought. He’d have to apologize for that later. Later. Everything could wait for this, Tony’s name from his lips repeated in growing urgency as the rest of his thoughts spiraled into blissful nothingness. 

Somewhere in the ship, the lights flickered and died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if it's obvious by this point in the series or not, but I don't reeeally write smut. Not out of morals or anything, I just don't think I write very good sex scenes heheh. Feelings out of the way, actual plot incoming! Stay tuned!


	8. crew

Stephen blundered awake to the sound of a fist slamming hard into the door of their borrowed cabin, and his movement jarred Tony awake and almost completely off the top of him—nearly toppled to the floor, teetering on the edge of the single-sized bunk. They stared at one another in a brief moment of recollection, through which Tony might have hit him with a cocky smirk if there hadn’t been a louder follow-up knocking.

“Hey!” Quill’s voice came from the other side of the door. “It’s getting late, dudes, come on!”

“Uh, you probably don’t want to come in,” Tony warned him loudly, and he started pawing around in attempts to find some shred of clothing.

There was a heavy sigh from the other side of the door, and after a pause, Quill’s only response was: “Seriously?”

Tony tried his best not to laugh, the joy bunching up in the lines around his eyes.

“Okay, this is your captain speaking,” Quill’s voice, tipping toward annoyance rather than anger, voice punching in full force through the closed door. “Put some freakin’ pants on and get topside, okay? Jeez…” The sound of his footsteps faded away, followed by a cloud of his mumbled complaints.

Stephen held a hand over his eyes as the pounding of the headache began to set in. His throat was dry and raw, and a familiar uneasiness had settled in his stomach. How long had it been since he’d actually had a hangover? God, maybe he _was_ a lightweight.

“Hey,” Tony said softly, leaning carefully over him, a hand anchored on Stephen’s chest. “You okay?”

Stephen uttered a grunt in reply, didn’t remove the hand from his eyes. Seeing as that probably wasn’t sufficient, he found enough breath to answer properly.

“Never go drinking with Tony Stark again,” he said as though taking a mental note.

There was no snarky comment that followed, and Stephen finally creaked one eye open to look up at him. There was a sudden, stark line of anxiety between Tony’s brows, his mouth half open.

“You didn’t take advantage of me,” Stephen assured him in a steady tone. Even if he hadn’t asked, as though afraid to broach the subject, Tony let out a little breath of relief. And Stephen’s lips curled very slowly into a smile. “Since when could you conjure the Mirror Dimension on your own?”

“Since my boyfriend got trapped in there without a way for me to get to him,” Tony said, that haughty look coming back into his eyes. He prodded a single finger into Stephen’s chest. “Hey, I can practice when you’re not looking.”

“That’s not what the Mirror Dimension is supposed to be used for, you know,” Stephen said, something giddy and loose in his gravelly tone.

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” Tony said, leaned in to press a kiss on Stephen’s forehead. 

No, that was was true. But he _had_ said more than a few _other_ things that brought heat surging back into his face (his neck, his ears, anywhere it could sink its claws in). His shoulders shook with silent laughter, red and hot and naked and fighting off the insistent throb of his headache.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?” Tony asked blithely, eyes alight.

Stephen felt another languid, useless laugh hit his lungs. “Just you,” he admitted, shut his eyes again to fight off the hangover. “Just you, Tones.”

There was a sigh somewhere over his head where he’d left Tony. The light touch of fingers feathering through his hair. “I love you, Stephen.”

“I—” Stephen began, and found that his thoughts (those not being battered by the persistent drum beat of dehydration in his temples) were circling around one word, over and over. Why? _Why_ did Tony love him? He tried to swallow those thoughts, but they lodged in his throat instead. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Yeah.” Tony’s sure voice had lost an ounce of its grip, but none of its strength. “Yeah, talk to me.”

Stephen’s eyes opened, found Tony’s face directly over his, leaning close enough that he could have lifted his head, kissed him, and forgotten all about his paranoid meanderings. But they had agreed. They had to talk, had to communicate. Stephen deflated with a long sigh, eyes searching that face for answers.

“Why?” was all Stephen asked.

Tony’s brows burrowed deep down his forehead, consternation screwing up into his expression. “Why what? Why do I _love you_?”

Stephen nodded (the pain was spreading to the back of his head, down his neck). “You’re Tony Stark. _Iron Man_. Stupidly-rich genius, stupidly handsome—”

“And you’re Stephen Fucking Strange,” Tony interrupted him.

Stephen fought off a single laugh and lost. “That’s not my middle name.”

“I know that’s not—” Tony uttered a tight sigh, strangled it back into words. “You’re a lot of stupid things, too, y’know. And don’t think you’ve got a monopoly on falling stupidly in love. That’s how I do most things.”

“Stupidly?” Stephen chuckled warmly.

“Yeah,” Tony replied. “Especially when it comes to _your_ magical ass. You’re stupid good-looking,” he began again, ticking them off on his fingers. “When you get past your wall of assholishness, you’re stupid sweet. You’re _stupidly_ powerful.”

“And to think, this whole time, you could’ve been dating Thor,” Stephen murmured, voice low and hiding under a smirk.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Tony cut off their growing laughter. “The guy’s got muscles. If you’re into that kind of thing.”

“Oh, thanks,” Stephen rumbled, rubbed his eyes.

“I mean,” Tony said after another moment, fingers tapping thoughtfully where they rested on Stephen’s chest. “D’you really know _exactly_ why you love someone? You just… It’s _everything_ , Steph. All of this.”

Stephen blinked slowly up at the man hovering over him, the grin like syrup on his face. It was rare to be treated to the raw happiness that he saw in Tony’s big eyes, and he realized that all he wanted to do today was take a walk in those eyes and get good and lost.

He took in a skittering breath, caught on the edge of emotion that had been building up in his chest, almost too big for his lungs.

“I love you, too, Tony,” Stephen said. Slid his fingers up through Tony’s hair, linking them at the back of his head to pull Tony down into a long, searching kiss.

A kiss interrupted by Peter Quill, who banged again on the door of the cabin—this time with both hands.

“Are you fucking _teenagers_?!” Quill shouted. “Up and at ‘em, let’s _go_!”

Which Tony answered with a loud bout of laughter, ducked his head in for one last kiss at Stephen’s cheek, and (with knees and elbows picking careful paths) climbed off of his boyfriend.

Stephen and Tony joined the rest of the crew topside only a small handful of minutes later (Stephen still trying to get his hair to lie flat, Tony tugging on a zip-up sweater over yet another stupid cat shirt). Nebula leaned moodily on the far wall, pinching at the bridge of her nose (maybe Stephen wasn’t the only one who’d had too much to drink), and Mantis lingered nervously near her. There was the pervading smell of the almost-coffee, a cup cradled in every set of hands on the ship—including the two latecomers, who gladly accepted the offer from Mantis.

“So, I won, by the way,” Quill said absently, sipping at the steaming liquid in his cup.

“You can’t win Never Have I Ever,” Tony reiterated, linking an arm through Stephen’s, leaning into him as he took his own drink (grimacing again at the taste).

“Well, I think everyone else forfeiting makes me win,” Quill claimed. “Especially since I said don’t start anything weird while I was literally taking care of everyone else.”

“Sorry for leaving early, Peter,” Stephen said for the both of them. And he winced again at a sharp pang behind his eyes. 

“Are you _hungover_?” Quill asked incredulously. “Shouldn’t a guy your age know better?”

“Not you, too,” Stephen grumbled.

“Okay, babe, hold still. This is ridiculous,” Tony said, and set his nearly-coffee aside. Formed his hands into a careful configuration, a spell that Stephen knew very well (and couldn’t believe he’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t thought of it himself). Golden light trained itself into Tony’s palm, and he held it firmly to Stephen’s temple.

Instant relief washed over him, and he visibly sagged with a sigh. Let his eyes fall closed and just let the healing spell work.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Quill asked, apparently having come closer. “Is that your nano stuff?”

“It’s a healing spell,” Tony told him, as if it were commonplace, as if it were easy. Stephen felt a smile crawling appreciatively across his lips.

“You can do that shit, too?” Quill’s voice went thin with baffled incredulity. “Can anyone do that? Can I do that?”

“It’s a simple matter of tapping into the energy of surrounding dimensions and channeling it through your own body using gestures or artifacts,” Stephen murmured under Tony’s ministrations.

“Simple,” Quill muttered through a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, simple for a couple smartasses. What about dumbasses?”

It even managed to make Tony snort with barely-contained laughter. “Hey, is it always this dark up here?” he asked, running the spell over the back of Stephen’s neck.

“No, it’s weird,” Quill grumbled, looking up at the lights overhead. “After I got back up here from putting Nebula in her bunk last night, all the lights went out. That never happens, and I can’t find anything wrong with ‘em.”

Stephen’s face felt too hot, and he made a broad motion at the indicated lights, which all flared back to their normal brightness at his command.

Quill’s head snapped to look at Stephen, took in his expression in a second. Looked from him to Tony, to the lights, then back to Stephen (who held his face in one of his hands, too heavy with embarrassment to even hold straight).

And Quill burst into bright, mocking, friendly laughter. “Ew!” he cried, grinning hard. “You did that when—oh my god, dude! That’s, like, six kinds of gross!”

“I don’t understand,” Mantis said, her face pinched in attempts to suss out the situation. 

Despite Quill’s ribbing, his loud and jeering laughter, Stephen realized that it wasn’t out of malice. It wasn’t mean or cruel, it was oddly joyful. Stephen knew, because he was a big brother, and he had done precisely the same thing. Peter Quill was picking on him.

They acknowledged it with matching grins, and that was that.

“Hey, so what’s so important, anyway?” Tony asked pointedly, steering conversation deftly away. He finished the spell off with a quick kiss just under Stephen’s ear to indicate he was done. “Seemed like you were in a rush to get us out here. Is community coffee a long-standing tradition, or something?”

“No,” Quill said, thankfully understanding the change of subject without it being too direct. He waved them forward into the cockpit, where the wide windows showed an impressive curtain of space hanging all around them. He dropped into his captain’s chair and waved a hand in front of the ship. “We’re getting close. Thought you guys should be awake when we actually got there. So you’d be ready, and everything. For…”

For the rescue mission. For whatever this turned out to be if it turned out there was no one to rescue. For the end of their journey, at least the leg of it that had allowed them to come around to one another. 

“How long?” Stephen asked, and Quill let out a thankful breath.

“Uh, probably not more than…” He punched his finger to the nearest console a few times before Nebula crashed into the navigator’s chair and came to his aid.

“An hour,” she told them. Sat back and crossed her arms, eyes narrowed at Quill. “How did you ever function without a competent navigator?”

“I did okay!” Quill protested, tried to look confident even as he took a long drink of not-coffee. “Besides, I’ve got Rocket, most of the time.”

Nebula didn’t even blink. “I have bigger hands. My skills outweigh his based on the merits of my height alone.”

“I’m not hiring,” Quill laughed incredulously, looking her up and down once with a quirked eyebrow. “We’re getting Rocket back. We’re getting everyone back.”

Even Stephen saw the way her lip twitched, her eyes dropped; Quill definitely couldn’t have missed it, in their proximity. 

Quill cleared his throat, waved a hand in her direction. “But, I mean. I’m glad you’re here, Nebula.”

She sniffed indignantly, straightened her spine. But even that degraded into an unsure glance. “Are you?”

The ship rocked under them, and Tony had an arm around Stephen and the other clamped to the nearest seat in the cockpit to keep them from tumbling. The cloak appeared from the underbelly of the ship, clasped helpfully onto Stephen’s shoulders.

“Aw, man!” Quill cried out, his semi-coffee spilled all down the front of him from the jolt. He discarded the now empty cup over his shoulder, strapped on his harness, and took control over from the autopilot. “Mantis! Get up here and strap in! Guys—!”

They didn’t need to be asked twice. Stephen and Tony found two empty seats and strapped in, followed quickly by Mantis. The ship rocked again, and she nearly tipped face-first into the cockpit (the exact word Quill had used buzzing in Stephen’s head—“splatted”). But the cloak reached out, grabbed her by the hand more quickly than human reflexes could have. She barely had time to utter a thank you before Tony made sure she was buckled in beside him.

“Quill!” Nebula snapped, wrenching all of the navigator screens out of her way, rubbing her head where she must have slammed into one of them.

“Working on it!” he assured her. He ratcheted a lever by his knee into position, and the ship righted itself as though balanced on a single point near the nose.

And as the ship tipped forward on that invisible fulcrum, the entire viewing field outside the front windows of the ship was taken up by the anomaly, hovering menacingly into view. It must have been miles wide, an enormous swirling portal; sparks flashing like lightning at the perimeter of the anomaly with the center darker and more ominous than the space surrounding it.

The sight mentally struck Stephen, and he uttered a sharp gasp to accompany the actual pain it sent searing through his mind’s eye. Before Tony could try to reach for him, the jarring noise of an alert sang dissonantly in the cockpit, warning lights flashing to accompany it.

“It moved!” Quill shouted, waving at the anomaly with the hand that wasn’t currently engaged with the command wheel. “What the—holy—” He swerved, slammed his hand down on a series of buttons to pull the ship into a hard skid.

“That’s not… normal, right?” Tony asked, hands gripping hard into the armrests of his seat. 

“No, it’s _not normal_ ,” Quill said in a mocking tone. “Nebula, flaps.”

“All flaps engaged,” she told him, hooked into her own series of screens. “Drop anchor?”

“No, no,” Quill said quickly. “Don’t wanna lock ourselves in if this thing decides to move again. Holy _crap_ ,” he sighed, running both hands back through his hair as he deflated backward into his seat. “I think it’s bigger, too!”

Normally, it might have been the kind of thing for Tony to hop in and start the ribbing, but he was uncharacteristcally silent. 

Once they’d come to a full stop, Tony wrangled himself free of the harness and took Stephen’s face in both of his hands. Made Stephen look at him, turned his head at all angles and checking him for injury.

“What happened? You okay?” Tony insisted, worried eyes sliding all over his person.

“I’m fine,” Stephen managed despite the way Tony was smashing his cheeks. However, his eyes flicked over Tony’s shoulder to the looming anomaly. Although not entirely convinced, Tony turned to match. 

And the entire crew sat in silence, sitting in the awful presence of the anomaly.

Tony moved first, down the cockpit until he was close enough to press a hand to the window, lean in, get as close a look at this thing as he possibly could while remaining in the safety of the ship. Stared silently through the glass at the shimmering light of the anomaly, eyes darting and cataloguing and already knee-deep in at least three different plans for three different scenarios.

Stephen joined him after only one hesitant moment (hanging behind to observe, watching for any of those telltale signs of stress, of panic), his own hand coming to rest tentatively on top of Tony’s on the glass.

“What are you thinking?” Tony asked quietly, his eyes never leaving the view before them.

Stephen tore his eyes away from Tony’s profile, gazed across at what they’d come to see. That _he specifically_ had been asked to help with. And there was little doubt in his mind, even as far away as they were now. He’d studied the Convergence deeply in the week leading up to their departure, as soon as he’d felt the metaphysical disturbances in the ether. Every scientific paper that had been written, every picture that had been tweeted. This was somehow related, he could see that much just by looking (by the way the hair stood up on his arms, on the back of his neck; the bombardment of so much planar energy all around him, he was surprised that no one else could feel it, that he hadn’t felt it on their approach).

Stephen took a hard breath, realized that he was lightheaded just from _staring_ at the anomaly. God knew what he was going to feel when he actually _examined_ it.

“Stephen?” Tony asked, bringing his attention back from the swirling anomaly before them.

“Right,” Stephen breathed, blinking too much. “I need to get out there.”

“Wait—” Tony took careful hold of Stephen’s hand, kept them both pressed to the glass. Wide brown eyes searching, worried. “You can’t cast that spell from in here?”

“Can you use your scanners in the ship?” Stephen posited.

“No, too much interference,” Tony answered very quickly.

Stephen gave him a knowing nod, but Tony shook his head.

“Hold on, mine’s electrical interference,” Tony argued. “Signals given off by Quill’s ship getting in the way.”

“And mine is spiritual interference. Yours, Peter’s—you’re all blasting your personal energy at full volume, it effects the calibration of the spell.”

Tony bit worriedly at his lip, but didn’t have anything else to say. His eyes projected it all. That look was cautious, something Tony Stark purported never to be. Anxious, protective. Protective of _him_ , Stephen realized. He’d never had anyone so determined to throw themselves in harm’s way for his sake, before he’d met Tony. Even when Tony had hardly known him, he had put himself on the front lines in Stephen’s defense—even when he admitted that he’d _hated_ Stephen. Now that they were both stupidly in love, just how hard was Tony going to try to protect him?

He broke away from the thought, took Tony’s hand in both of his own, focused both of their attention.

“This is why I’m here, Tones,” Stephen said firmly. He held Tony’s hand to his mouth, kept their eyes locked when he kissed Tony’s knuckles, the tips of his fingers—and then strode away. “Peter, is this a safe distance for the ship?”

“Uh,” Quill began, watched Stephen move by him, as well. “For now, yeah. Wait, you’re going _now_?” And Quill was up out of his chair after Stephen, Tony hot on both of their heels.

“This _is_ why you came all the way to Earth, isn’t it?” Stephen asked, turning only slightly to see the both of them following. He beckoned to the cloak, which fixed onto his shoulders eagerly. “For my help? Yes, I’m going now.” 

“Okay, okay, hold on,” Quill urged, circled quickly until he stood between Stephen and the ladder to the loading bay. “Let’s at least all get together and—” He moved when Stephen moved, continuing to block the way. “Hey! Rude!”

“The sooner I can start calibrating the spell, the sooner I can understand the nature of the anomaly,” Stephen said, lip curling just slightly. He turned his head, saw Tony lingering just behind him—arms crossed and nervous, but not interfering. “Give me a suit and bring out that tether, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Let’s just take a second and make sure we’re all on the same page, okay?” Quill insisted despite the way Stephen advanced on him.

“Peter—”

“I’m not losing any more of my crew to that thing!” Quill shouted, suddenly red in the face and shaking. Took in a hard breath, and pointed harshly to the table at the center of the lounge. “I’m the captain, and you’re on _my_ ship. That means—that means you’re my crew, okay? So sit down and huddle up. That’s an order.”

Stephen was honestly thrown. And, judging by the way Tony’s mouth hung half open, so was he. Even the cloak did an odd doubletake. The indignant, persistent embarrassment was still hot and red in Quill’s cheeks, but he did his best to ignore it.

“Okay, Captain,” Tony said for both of them, the flabbergasted tone of his voice hanging on the edge of amused. And broke the tension by saying: “Do I have to salute you, now?”

Quill’s face broke into hissing laughter—chest still tight with emotion, but released as through from a leaking tire.

“Yeah,” Quill said with renewed smugness. “That’s also an order.”

Tony flicked a little salute from his brow, linked his arm with Stephen’s, and pulled them back into the lounge.

“I thought this crew didn’t _do_ plans, Peter,” Stephen mused, smirking at Nebula as she joined them.

“Yeah, well, you can see how well that went last time,” Quill admitted. And when Mantis cautiously sidled up to his side, he slung an arm around her shoulders. “We’re working together this time. Then, if we die, it’s _everyone’s_ fault.”

Tony’s welcome laughter filled the bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you about those faster chapters, bro


	9. anomaly

The ship rocked gently in the waves of invisible energy surging off of the anomaly, barely noticeable but perceptible nonetheless. Mantis’ big eyes remained locked on the swirling portal, trepidation wrinkling her brow. She held tightly to the arm that Quill had offered her, as if it were the last bulwark of protection. Nebula’s dark eyes hung on her, arms crossed and silent.

“So there’s definitely some kind of gravitational pull,” Quill said, tossed a small handheld device to Tony. He caught it, examined it for just a moment before he’d discovered its purpose, and clicked it on. The flickering holographic display wasn’t completely unlike Stark tech, and the series of numbers and graphs overlaid over Tony’s eyes were at least easy enough to understand.

“Are these numbers from the first time you found this thing?” Tony asked, not looking up from the data.

“Yeah,” Quill replied. “It’s probably worse out there, now. I can tell you just by looking that this thing’s bigger than it was a few days ago.”

“Hence why you didn’t want me jumping into space without another scan,” Stephen murmured, gaze lingering on Quill’s rigid stance. 

“Right,” Tony announced. “I’ll go first. Didn’t build these new scanners for nothing. I’ll get new readings on the gravity situation, and anything else I can dig up. Then we can talk about sending out the big guns.”

Stephen didn’t deny that he might be considered ‘the big guns’, and amusement sparkled somewhere in Tony’s eyes—sharing space with the anxiety and the adrenaline. 

“Just stay in sight of the ship, Tones,” Stephen said quietly. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Let’s get this show on the road, then, huh?” Tony said with all enthusiasm, tossed the device back to Quill, and tapped the arc reactor to bring out the Iron Man suit. 

The lot of them retreated to the loading bay, where Quill went through the routine of bringing up the air barrier and lowering the ramp. Nebula had brought the ship around so that the tail rather than the nose faced the anomaly—huge, at this distance; taking up their entire field of vision from the back of the ship. Stephen held his mouth to the cold metal of Tony’s helmet (good luck, a reminder) before Iron Man stepped away through the barrier and launched out into space.

“I can feel it trying to pull me in, but it’s not as strong as you’d think,” Tony mused over the com. Stephen kept an eye on his dark outline against the anomaly, saw his repulsors fix him into position, hovering at a safe distance. Stephen leaned as close to the air barrier as he could, had to keep Tony in his sights. “Okay, stabilized,” he said after a moment. “FRIDAY, what are we looking at?”

“Not one hundred percent sure,” she answered even in Stephen’s ear. “Gravitational pull detected, but not enough to override the ship’s thrusters at this distance. We’ll need new data from your scanners.”

“Working on it. Does anyone tell you that you can get kinda pushy?”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Boss.”

Quill snickered behind him, and pointed indistinctly skyward. “I like her.”

“Scanning,” Tony announced, and from his position in the loading bay, Stephen could see Tony hold both of his arms straight out in front of him, palms flat as though he were going to send twin repulsor blasts at the anomaly. “And send the data back to the ship, too,” he added aloud to the AI.

“Got it,” she said. “Peter Quill, are you receiving the Boss’s transmission?”

“Uh,” Quill said, and he made a dash for the nearest console embedded in the wall. “Uh, yeah, I think so. Whatever your data packet is made out of, my ship _really_ doesn’t like it, though.”

“Decrypting,” FRIDAY said briefly, and the console flashed brightly before the data began unspooling remarkably fast down the screen.

“Woah! There you go!” Quill cried, sent Stephen a grin and a thumbs-up. “Okay, getting your readings, Stark. Hey, FRIDAY?”

“I’m listening,” she said after his awkward pause.

“Um, is it possible to like, take my old readings and compare it to this?”

“Sure thing, just allow me access to your data core.”

“Ohh, no you don’t,” Quill grumbled, and began typing into the console on his own. “You’re probably programmed to delete all my _good_ music and fill my ship with Stark’s… _gross_ music.”

“Sounds like something I’d do,” Tony admitted over the com. “I’m getting some really wacky fluctuations. You confirm that, Quill?”

“Copy that, the numbers are spiking all over the place. With a black hole, shouldn’t it be steady?”

“Unless there was something it was eating up that we couldn’t see.”

“So, what, you think we can see the black hole but not the sun it’s stuffing its face with?”

“No, I think Steph’s right. I don’t think this is a black hole at all. But it’s sure doing a pretty good impression of one.”

“I need to get out there,” Stephen grumbled, held a hand to his ear. “You’ve got readings on the gravitational pull of the anomaly, am I cleared to take my own readings, now?”

“I’m not satisfied,” Tony grumbled.

“Are you ever?” Stephen snarked. 

“None of this data makes sense,” Tony ignored the sass.

“All the more reason—” Stephen protested, but he was cut off by an annoyed little noise from Tony’s com.

“I know, I know. Just… keep that tether on, okay? With the numbers jumping around like this, I can’t be sure both of us won’t get sucked up into this thing.”

The cloak released off of Stephen’s shoulders and fluttered to Quill’s side, took him by the arm and tore him from his spot by the console.

“Woah, hey!” Quill stuttered, dug his heels in and fought the cloak’s insistent strength. “Does this thing have an off switch?”

Stephen made a small motion with his hand, offset by the slant grin on his face, in an attempt to call the cloak off. “It can be… stubborn.”

The cloak’s collar whirled around accusingly at Stephen, reeled up in an affronted gesture with its shoulders and collar gone rigid. Still, it managed to pull Quill to Stephen’s side, pointed again at the belt where Quill had clipped the tether before, and settled snugly around Stephen’s shoulders.

“I can take a hint, jeez,” Quill murmured, rubbed at the spot on his arm where he’d been grabbed. He reeled the tether out of the wall and clipped it onto Stephen’s belt. “You’d think _this thing_ was your boyfriend, or something.”

The cloak whacked offendedly at Quill’s hand, and he retreated with a yelp.

“Hey! Cut it out, I’m the captain, remember?!” Quill snapped.

Stephen nodded in affirmation, eyes on the collar around his neck. And then the cloak settled, shrugged, and made a loose salute with its collar in an imitation of Tony.

Quill grumbled, eyeing the cloak with a little miffed curl of his lip, and handed the disc containing the space suit into Stephen’s waiting hand.

“Let us know the second anything weird starts happening with that spacehole,” Quill said, and he laid a careful hand on Stephen’s upper arm. Patted him twice there, stepped back and cleared his throat. 

“That’s an order,” Stephen said for him, smiling. “We will, Peter.”

He clamped the disc over his heart, and the airtight film spread over him again with a chill all the way down his spine. Gave Quill a thumbs-up as he backed through the air barrier, and out into space. With a bolstering sigh, he propelled himself in Tony’s direction by shoving off with his legs.

A moment later, stabilizing himself with a spell, Stephen pulled up alongside Tony. Both catching each other's’ eye. Even at this distance, Stephen could feel the pull of the anomaly, almost like a light breeze. Tony waved, and Stephen imagined that if Tony had been capable of making it happen, the suit would have winked at him.

“You come here often?” Tony asked, leaning casually on thin air as if on a bartop.

“Not if I can help it,” Stephen murmured in reply. “Hold still, love.” 

Stephen flashed a hand up between them, and a glowing orange ring appeared—resting on each of his fingertips and throwing shadows across Stephen’s angled face.

“Woah!” Tony yelped, the gesture for summoning a shield coming just as quickly as preparing a repulsor blast. The shining blue runes of Tony’s shield met Stephen’s spell with bright sparks. Both of the spells failed on contact, the light going out between them. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t know what you were—”

“I’m calibrating the spell for the weight of your energy,” Stephen grumbled, going through the routine of the configurations again. “That’s why I said hold still.”

“Not a great warning,” Tony mumbled, and he reset his position to resume his own scan.

The ring appeared again at the tips of Stephen’s fingers, much simpler than the complicated mandalas of a shield. Just a single glowing ring. Stephen splayed his fingers wide, and the single ring expanded into two—a lattice of runes appearing between the two rings, pulsing and glowing with Tony’s heartbeat.

Stephen’s eyes glanced over the runes, reading Tony’s biorhythms from them at a glance. Heart rate, blood pressure, and (among other things) the more undefinable _energy_ that he radiated like body heat would in cold air. Someone that had tapped into outerplanar energy even once had the undeniable aura of magic within and without—something intangible to the naked eye, but detectable under sorcery’s scrutiny—and Tony had dabbled long enough with spells to practically _smell_ of arcane energy. Stephen wondered absently what a readout aimed in _his_ direction would tell him, considering how long he’d spent in the Dark Dimension and as the Sanctum’s protector.

“So, what’s the news, Doc?” Tony asked blithely. “That’s what the runes say, right? You’re doing a scan on me.”

“You haven’t called me Doc in a long time,” Stephen mused, not moving his gaze from the spell as his unoccupied hand moved from his side to adjust the size and breadth of the rings manually. “You’re in good health, for your age and occupation.”

“Is saving the universe an occupation?” Tony asked, the insufferable smirk actually tangible in his voice.

“Yes, it is,” Stephen said calmly. 

And he was struck again by the anomaly, just in the corner of his eye but almost physically reaching out. He took a sharp breath, and, with Tony’s energy signature accounted for and eliminated, he turned full-body to face that anomaly head on.

It was like an eye, fixed on him and staring. Peering, trying to peel him apart and investigate him just as he was investigating.

“You hear that?” Tony asked, the playful tone gone completely as his head snapped in the same direction as Stephen’s.

“Quiet,” Stephen urged him breathlessly. With another hard motion from his fingers, Stephen blew the two-ring spell into three, taking up all of the space in front of him, his entire height. Larger runes circling in the new lattice with new readings. The hand holding the spell shook, but remained firm.

Distance, width, the gravitational pull they were feeling—which, Stephen realized as a new rune etched itself out on its way by his face, was pulling planar energy into itself; feeding itself not only on the power of this material plane, but those lying beneath and parallel to it. Familiar Asgardian runes graced the readout of the spell, and Stephen blinked to understand.

“No, I’m serious,” Tony said (admittedly, more quietly than before). “There’s some kind of transmission I’m picking up.”

“Probably just interference from the ship,” Quill said over the com. “Some of your shitty tunes leaking out, or something.”

“Both of you,” Stephen snapped, lungs tight as he forced the spell into a fourth ring. It glowed even brighter, and Stephen squinted hard to read the new information circling around him. “Shut-up, please, I need to… to concentrate.”

It was a jumble of information, and Stephen realized that he was trying to make sense of it with a brain that had barely slept in a week. The days of insomnia preceding Quill’s arrival, Tony’s nightmares keeping him on his toes, and nocturnal activities not to be mentioned in polite company. If he’d only rested more, he’d have better control of the spell, an easier time trying to unlock the puzzle of the runes spinning before him in a flat circle.

“Stephen?” Tony’s voice buzzed in his ear, and he ignored it with a shake of his head.

Well, if this was a puzzle, Stephen thought with a steading breath, better to mix things up.

He slammed both hands out at once, and the rings unlocked themselves from their upright position. Spun elegantly around him in a multilayered globe. Twisting, mingling with one another as they encircled him.

He was peripherally aware of Tony laughing over the com—something bright and impressed and gorgeous. Stephen forced it out of his heart, forced himself to concentrate on the words circling around him.

“What is this?” Tony finally managed to ask, almost as breathless as Stephen (softly; in awe).

“I can read these runes,” Stephen pushed through the tightness of his chest, “like a script. Like those—Asgardian runes,” he said between hard breaths (his hands locked into configuration, pointing with a nod of his head instead). “Indicating the same kind of energy surge as the Convergence in London. But there—” He nodded again, this time at another long string of strange runes. “While there was some inciting incident, it’s fueling itself autonomously from the energy of any planes in resonance.”

“Like you,” Quill said suddenly. “Holy shit.”

“You think this thing was set up by a sorcerer?” Tony asked, coming in as close as he could with the orbiting rings in his way.

“I can read every spell, every inch of sorcery breathed into this place. But one sorcerer?” Stephen asked, somewhere between a laugh and a desperate pull of breath. “They’d have to be a real _wizard_. I—”

There was a sudden, opposing surge of energy from the anomaly, and it struck Stephen as hard as a whip. His voice and breath caught, shaking, but he never dropped his hands. Kept the spell going, kept delving. The runes around him burned as though hot. They cracked and they split, but they didn’t break.

Tony was yelling something. Maybe his name.

If Stephen was anything, he was determined. He was _not_ going to be pushed around by some spacehole. So he grit his teeth, figuratively dug his feet in, and he pushed back, an ebb to the flow of magic that had slammed back at him. Closed his eyes and followed the tether of that strike. 

And found someone watching _him_.

He gasped in a breath, held it, and crushed his hands into tight fists. The pain of controlling the spell under that scrutiny flashed through his nerves like lightning, but he fought through it—the scream flooded into his throat against his will, burning it raw. And he used that pain (an old friend) as a focus, sent the energy remaining in his limbs shooting back through his renewed configuration.

The runes flared back to life around him. 

“I see you,” he managed around the haggard breath, cold eyes on the runes, brighter and clearer than before, shining with strength enough for him to read exactly what he needed. 

It saw _him_ , too.

And then, the spell broke. Fell to pieces around him, shimmering before they were swallowed up by the blackness of space—swallowed by the anomaly. With it went all of the energy that Stephen had siphoned into it, his breath—and, with whiteness crowding swiftly in on his vision, his consciousness.

Tony’s heart rammed hard into his throat, and only moved when he shouted, “ _Stephen_!” Threw on his repulsors and swept up to Stephen’s side with the spell gone. Stephen hung weightless in zero gravity, limbs loose, held at the middle by the tether on his belt from being pulled into the gravity of the anomaly. 

Tony bundled Stephen into his armored arms, cupped his hanging head to tilt it up and face him. Called out again, panic rising in his throat like bile. Stephen was always pale, but never this white. And holding Stephen’s limp body in his arms struck him hard in the chest and wrenched his lungs and heart into a stony knot. 

“FRIDAY, tell me he’s breathing,” Tony’s tight voice demanded.

“Scans show he’s respirating, but his pulse is real low, Boss.”

He didn’t wait for Quill to reel them in. He grabbed Stephen, and blasted them back at the ship.

“Emergency landing incoming, Quill, get out of the way!” was the only warning Tony gave before he landed at a run in the loading bay. Slammed through the air barrier and was only peripherally aware of the ramp lifting and closing behind him. He laid Stephen carefully on the floor of the ship. Planted an arm firmly on one side, propped up to look over him as he deactivated Stephen’s spacesuit and unhooked the tether. The cloak hovered worriedly, peeking over Tony’s shoulder and circling the both of them in a panic.

“FRIDAY, what’s wrong with him? What can I do?” Tony asked, throat tighter and tighter as Stephen’s head lolled uselessly to the side (gently moved it back, held him in place, tried not to throw up).

“No medical emergencies detected,” she told him after the briefest scan.

“Replay the recording of the spell he used on me,” Tony demanded.

As asked, she showed Tony exactly what he needed—the video of Stephen’s spell, the movement and placement of his hands, playing over the unconscious man under him.

Tony fit his hands into the exact configuration he’d just watched, breathed his energy into the spell, and tried to will that little ring to his fingertips. It sparked, flashed into existence for a moment, and sputtered and died.

“Fuck,” Tony bit, shook his hand to rid it of the static tingle of leftover energy.

At his curse, Stephen shifted, moved his head on his own, sagging in the other direction. Eyes still closed, still frighteningly pale, but most definitely alive. Tony’s heart might have exploded, for all the warmth he suddenly felt in his chest.

“Hey,” Tony said, swept the errant hair from Stephen’s eyes (bangs damp with sweat, throat raw, breathing thin and reedy but steady). “Hey, I’ve got _you_ now, okay?” Tony swallowed, loudly, and his voice caught harshly on the next words. “Okay? Baby?”

Stephen’s hand loosely rose from his side, clasped weakly around Tony’s, and nodded.

“Okay,” Stephen said, almost too quiet.

A pathetic laugh shuddered out of Tony’s lungs, giddy and worried and relieved and terrified. Held shaking fingers at the side of Stephen’s face, did away with his helmet to lean down and hold a long kiss at Stephen’s brow.

“Don’t do that,” Tony sighed, kissing him again and again on any inch of Stephen’s face he could get his mouth on. “God, don’t do that again. I was—you were—”

Stephen’s limp arm wriggled free and planted a single finger on Tony’s lips instead. Tony smiled sadly around it, and the first thing that Stephen saw when he opened his eyes were the tears on Tony’s cheeks.

“Are you crying?” Stephen asked, hazy with the cotton of unconsciousness still thick on his brain and his tongue.

“Shut-up,” Tony laughed, and the Iron Man armor was gone completely when he wiped messily at his face, cleared away the tears. “Stephen, you were all white and you weren’t moving, and—”

“I’m okay,” Stephen said, not quite firmly. Cupped his hand instead to the side of Tony’s face, ran his thumb reassuringly along Tony’s cheek (found Tony’s hand clapped over his in an instant, holding them close as if Stephen had anywhere else to be; as if he was going to disappear somehow if Tony didn’t hold him there). “I told you you’re not going to be alone, Tony. I’m not leaving you. You can’t get rid of a wizard so easily.”

Tony laughed again, somewhere between manic and loving. “God, I hope not.” His next breath tripped over itself, hard and shuddering, and he tried to laugh it all away. “Is this clingy?” he asked (sweeping his eyes over Stephen’s face, relief pouring out of him).

Stephen shook his head loosely, and finally managed a smile that worked its way slowly onto his mouth. And then he found enough strength in weak, shaking arms to push himself up on one elbow, and brought their mouths together like they were two magnets. Tony gladly obliged. He poured his warmth and his love into that kiss, and that emotion surged through Stephen as hard as an electric shock. Brought life and feeling instantly back into him, like he was in a pulpy novel.

Not in a romance novel, Stephen suddenly realized—because that surge of energy was tangible, it was _real_ , not just the maudlin fluttering of his heart. Tony was literally kissing strength into him. The shock made him gasp in a hard breath of refreshing air, filling his lungs and all the space in his chest with renewed energy like a star going suddenly supernova.

Stephen’s eyes flew open, and he pulled away, just an inch—now trying to catch his breath for a different reason. “Do you know you’re doing that?” he asked.

“Doing what?” Tony asked, eyes flicking to Stephen’s mouth and back. “Kissing you?”

Annoyed, Stephen took Tony’s nearest hand—the one not propping him up over Stephen’s still-prone form—and pressed it to his own cheek, flushed and burning with new life. 

“Okay, so, you’re blushing. Good to know I still got it?” Tony asked, squinting in thought.

“That’s _you_ , Tones. Energy transfer. My heartbeat is more steady, body temperature raised. I’ve got my color back, and my strength.” To prove the theory, Stephen sat fully up on his own to meet Tony eye to to eye on the floor of the loading bay. Threw his arms open in a way that a magician might for his final bow.

Tony blinked. “You can do that?”

“ _You_ did that,” Stephen sighed. “It’s not unheard of—with big magic especially, sorcerers have been known to spread the share of energy out to—”

And that was when he noticed the rest of the crew. Quill on one knee beside them, leaning in with worry crinkling his brow. Mantis crouched beside Quill, with hands clutched and antennae glowing, her eyes full of anticipation. Even Nebula had joined them, at her full height with neck bent to look directly down at him.

“He’s fine,” Nebula said bluntly. “Shape up, the both of you. We’re already on a rescue mission, we don’t have time to for you to keep rescuing each other.”

“Okay, we gotta debrief, _now_ ,” Quill interrupted her. “What happened out there? All I got was a bunch of yelling. And Stark, you said something about a transmission?”

Stephen had completely forgotten about Tony’s possible intercepted transmission, with the urgency of his own discoveries. He turned to face Tony again (whose eyes were still wet, which he dismissed by clearing his throat loudly and dropping his gaze from Stephen’s).

“Yeah, I did,” Tony said. “So, you believe me, now?”

“As soon as you said you heard something,” Quill protested, “Stephen’s magic spell started wigging out on him. I didn’t hear whatever you said you did, Stark, but something fucky is going on.”

“Lucky for you,” Tony said, and he stood, bringing Stephen to his feet with him, “I brought FRIDAY with me and told her to record everything. I’ve got the whole thing in here.” He pointed at the housing for his nanites. And then, furrowing his eyebrows at the surrounding Guardians, said: “So, how many of you speak Groot?”


	10. into the black

Quill had listened to the recording three times, and still had a look like he’d bitten into a bad apple on his pinched face. Held a single finger in the air and waved it in a circle, requesting a fourth repeat. Tony obliged, and the garbled, static heavy message played again over the ship’s speakers.

There was no denying who had sent the transmission. It was unquestionably Groot’s voice—even Stephen, who had only met the rest of the Guardians after the death of Thanos, and then only very briefly, could tell that much. Quill, being the most adept at translation, had taken the job with a seriousness that, though not quite at home on his face, was becoming a sadly familiar sight.

A pang of guilt punched somewhere low in Stephen’s gut. He’d dismissed Tony’s interception of the signal as interference, just as Quill had—had been so focused on his own situation that he hadn’t even considered that they very people that needed their help were on the other end of that static. The question as to why Groot had sent a message rather than Thor or any of the other Guardians was troubling.

He felt Tony’s hand come down heavy on top of his own, squeezing gently to gain Stephen’s attention. Tony had hardly been able to tear his eyes away from him since he’d come out of the daze the broken spell had hit him with. He lingered by Stephen’s side, one hand on him at all times (as though afraid to lose him, to be too far in case something else threatened his boyfriend). Stephen would probably be exactly the same way. After Tony had pulled Stephen’s practically lifeless body out of the influence of the anomaly, he didn’t know if he could blame the paranoia. 

That was a pretty problem of its own. Whoever had been at the other end, whoever he’d caught a glimpse of through the runes, had been in complete control. Stephen was an adept sorcerer, and he didn’t think it was much of a brag to say that he was among the best on Earth. But he’d been at the mercy of that anomaly, whoever had set it spinning into motion. Whoever had seen him and struck out with him with enough force to crush his spell to dust around him at a distance.

A self sustaining siphon of dimensional energy, Stephen regarded. Thor claiming to have heard the remaining Asgardians before disappearing into the anomaly, and now Tony’s interception of a message from Groot. The runes indicated that this thing had an extremely similar energy signature to the portals that appeared over London during the Convergence. The disturbance in the planar stability this anomaly was creating was strong enough for him to sense from Earth. 

He took a breath, and tried to focus on one problem at a time.

“So, if you don’t know what he’s saying, what d’you do when Groot talks to you?” Tony asked, eyes sideways at Nebula.

“He doesn’t,” Nebula muttered.

“Ah,” Tony said awkwardly. 

“Groot means no harm, Nebula,” Mantis said kindly. “Trees his age are often contrary for no reason other than to be contrary.”

“Teenagers,” Tony bolstered her with a wide shrug.

“Okay,” Quill said, standing suddenly. “Shut it off, Stark.”

Tony looked up sharply, and did as he was asked. He rose off the table and move around it to meet Quill eye to eye.

“So?” Tony asked.

“So, he sounds scared, okay?” Quill snapped, reeling around to face stare Tony down, his face stuffed too full of emotion. “I can barely hear what he’s saying, it’s too staticy. Just that he’s by himself and he sounds _scared_.” He rubbed both of his hands over his face, scrubbed hard as if that might remove some of the feelings rising to the surface. “I lost him. I lost all of ‘em, and it’s Gamora all over again!”

The silence struck the entire crew, like they were all impaled together on the same spike of feeling. Nebula’s stony face pulled into a stricken frown, eyes dropping to her feet.

“No, it’s not,” Tony said, voice hard to match Quill’s. “She died, and you couldn’t do anything about it. But this isn’t over, Quill. You can do something. We’re gonna do something.”

“Well, that’s easy for you to say!” Quill pushed through, tears turning his voice rough and uneasy. He stabbed an accusatory finger hard to his own chest. “I had the gun in my hand! She asked me to kill her so _he_ couldn’t! I tried—” Quill finally stumbled over his tears, shoved them off his cheeks with the heel of his hand. 

When he met Stephen’s eye, Quill’s anger quickly balked, retreated with the hard sniffle he tried to hide. He tore back away from Tony and paced around the table. Deep in thought, eyes darting in his head as he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

“We’re going in,” Quill said. Sharp. Final.

“What?” Mantis squeaked, her hands crushing into scared fists just under her chin. “Into the spacehole?”

“That’s where they went, and at least Groot made it through alive,” Quill continued. He strode away from them and into the cockpit, slammed down into his chair and began pressing buttons in sequence to start the engines. “So, it’s at least kinda safe.”

“This is a rescue mission, not suicide!” Tony chased after him, legs working double-time to keep up. “Let me mock up a probe, we can send that in and get better readings—”

“I don’t have time to probe anything!” Quill shouted. Jammed a finger on a button, and the ship rumbled with life.

“Okay, but _we’re_ on your ship, too!” Tony cleared away the consoles in front of Quill’s seat, made space for his own face to stare affronted across at the captain. “Throw yourself at that thing and write us a postcard, but don’t launch all of us into something we don’t completely understand!”

“Stephen,” Quill said, completely ignoring Tony to turn in his seat and look back at the rest of them still gathered where he’d left them. “Can we go through it?”

All the eyes on the ship turned to him, brought him into sharp focus. He crossed his arms, and ducked his head in thought. Recalled the spinning of the runes around him, tapped thoughtful fingers to his chin.

“Yes,” he said after a moment.

“Ha!” Quill shouted, wheeling back around to shove an accusatory finger in Tony’s face.

“Peter,” Stephen interrupted, and he stepped into the cockpit to join the two of them. “I believe that this really is some sort of portal, and I believe that Thor drove your pod into it on this side of space and entered it into somewhere else. But I also think that we have to consider the consequences of our actions. Wherever this portal took them, somehow Groot was separated. And…” He thought of the spike of energy from the other end of that portal, whatever had lashed out at him and tried to break his spell. “And we have to consider what might be on the other end of it. Consider something like Dormammu waiting for us the moment we go through. Are you ready for that possibility?”

“All I needed to hear was that we can do it,” Quill said stoically, nodded, and continued the procedure of readying the ship for flight.

“Incredible.” Coming up from behind them, Nebula cracked a hard smile. “You’ve finally got a spine, Quill.”

And Quill looked at her differently, then. Not apprehensive or cautious, not walking on eggshells around her temper. Appreciative, not hiding the grin that slid onto his mouth. 

“There’s no telling where we’ll end up,” Tony protested. “So even if it _is_ a portal, it could be taking us across the universe.”

“And if it’s a portal, it goes both ways,” Quill fought right back—rose from his seat and was suddenly up in Tony’s space, absolutely didn’t back down. “I know you don’t give a shit about us, Stark, but I don’t care. They can be idiots, and bastards, and sometimes I wanna launch all of ‘em into the sun myself. But they’re my goddamn _family_. I’m gonna do whatever I have to do so I can have ‘em back. Even if that means flying up that spacehole.”

Finally (strangely) Tony didn’t fight back. He even eased out of his tense stance, shifted his weight. And he laughed. Something quiet and understanding. 

“I get it,” Tony said. 

His eyes flicked up to find Stephen, who suddenly felt the weight of the exact same thoughts running through his head. Thoughts that he’d known he had, but hadn’t been struck by them so forcefully until that moment—the moment that Quill had called the Guardians his family. He realized so starkly that there was very little that he wouldn’t do for Peter, or Wanda, or even Wong. Their own mismatched family at the Sanctum, the people that were theirs without blood but without question.

And he clapped Quill twice on the upper arm, flashed that hand into a thumbs-up, and moved around the captain and his dazed, confused expression. “All right, let’s get everyone buckled up. Who knows what kind of ride we’re looking at.”

“Hey,” Quill said, shaking off his momentary stupor. “That’s my job!”

All of them took their positions, and took a collective moment to stare the anomaly down. Stephen pushed any of the apprehension from his veins with a cool breath, focused his energy, and took the hand that Tony had resting on his shoulder.

Quill punched the thrusters, and the ship shot forward at the anomaly—straight into the gravity well that had tried to pull Stephen in. Sailing in eerie silence as they approached the very same portal that had taken Thor and the others (that had struck out at Stephen like a living thing).

The ship jumped as if struck.

Quill’s hands clamped to his armrests, shock in the whites of his wide eyes. “Uh, Nebula?”

“No debris,” she stated, fingers flying over the navigator’s screens. 

The ship moved again, as though trapped in the lingering waves of a wake. Bobbled, almost thrown, and resisted any of Quill’s attempts to reign it in. And then it lurched forward as if on a string, driving full-tilt into the anomaly.

“Oh man,” Quill uttered, shoving a foot in amongst his consoles for leverage, leaning as hard as he could against the throttle. “Uh, everything’s totally fine, but also I think I might be losing her!”

“The pull of the anomaly is too strong,” Nebula barked, and she slammed her own consoles aside, ran to Quill’s side and grabbed the throttle with him. 

“Hey!” Quill snapped, “I’m trying to control this thing!”

“Then let me help you, _idiot_!” Nebula shouted over the rumbling of the engines.

They glared at each other for almost too long, before Quill tore his eyes away with a growl and pointed at the throttle. “Keep that down to the floor! I need to steer! Mantis!”

She hopped to attention in her seat. 

“Get in Nebula’s chair and make sure we stay on the plotted course, okay?”

“But we need to stay buckled, or we will get splatted!” Mantis cried.

“We’re all gonna be splatted if we can’t get this under control!”

“I got it!” Tony shouted, unbuckling himself just in time for the ship to rock again—caught by the cloak before he could topple. With that assistance, Tony was able to clamp himself into the navigator’s seat and reel the panels back around in front of him. Instantly read what he needed to, and started adjusting their coordinates. “The pull of the gravity well is through the roof—if we hit that thing at the speed it wants us to, we could smash into something on the other side!”

Stephen rose from his seat, took the next shudder of the ship with bent knees, and moved as close to the nose of the ship as possible (ignoring Tony’s shout and Mantis’ quiet cry of concern). 

He held his fingertips to the glass of the cockpit windows, barely coming into contact with the ship as it rumbled and shuddered all around them (Quill grunting and shouting to hold their course indistinctly behind him). Closed his eyes, searched himself for the energy Tony had given him. And he bestowed it suddenly into the glowing, golden mandala that appeared outside the ship, at the nose and shimmering like a beacon for an entire, weighty second.

And then the spell ensnared the ship like it had driven through a cobweb, like Stephen had caught them in a net, thin strands of the mandala entwining like delicate lace on the hull of the ship.

As though suddenly taken by an oversized hand, or sailing through unexpectedly calm waters, the resistance of the anomaly against the ship was gone almost completely.

“Go, Peter!” Stephen urged, holding his hand flat against the glass, keeping the spell steady.

“Got it, Doc!” Quill roared, grinning, and he reeled the ship back under his control, and Nebula floored it. The ship practically reared from the sudden acceleration, an unruly horse barely under their command, and they barreled on toward the center of the anomaly.

“Pulling up to the center!” Tony called. “Hold on to your asses!”

They hit the anomaly like a boat hitting a wave, spray parting around them as they crested and then dove right into the heart of the spinning portal.

And then, suddenly, they were no longer surrounded by the infinite darkness of space. They flew straight into the driving rain, a darkly violet sky lit up with lightning before them, illuminating the ghostly silhouettes of nearby mountains.

Stephen dropped the spell, which fell away from the ship like hundreds of leaves crumbling in the autumn, and dropped back into the nearest seat to stare out at the new world that awaited them. He felt Tony leaning forward, felt the hand gripping his shoulder, and heard the tight breath in his ear.

“Where the hell are we?” Tony asked.

Stephen shook his head, didn’t quite find his voice.

“Quill?” Tony’s head shot up, looked over at their captain.

“Uh,” Quill’s quiet, shaking voice began. “Try—try looking up coordinates on that second screen. And scan for a safe landing spot somewhere close.”

“Nebula, a little hand?” Tony asked after the briefest moment of exploring the navigator’s controls.

She didn’t immediately come to his assistance. She lingered near Quill, her discomfort clear, but still overwhelmed by something Stephen hadn’t expected to ever grace her features. Concern. Not at their predicament, either—she was locked on Quill like her emotion was heat-seeking. And he finally noticed it with a hard double-take, fitting her with something confused.

“Neb!” Tony called a second time.

Her head snapped up, fixed him with a molten glare. “That’s not my name.” But she rose and she came to stand beside Tony at the navigator’s station. “I do all of the work on this garbage ship.” She tapped several times at the nearest interface, and her scowl deepened. “Your nav is broken,” she grumbled, glaring between the screen and the world below them.

“It can’t be busted, what d’you mean _busted_?” Quill didn’t leave his captain’s seat, but he craned his neck to try and read her screens.

“I said broken,” she said, and she flipped the screen around to show him. “Nothing. No coordinates. There should be _something_ here, Quill.”

Quill didn’t say anything for some time, swallowed harshly, and he nodded. “Okay. Any sign of somewhere safe to land?”

“There’s a clearing just to the west,” Tony said, leaning out of the seat to point out the window in lieu of functioning equipment. “I’ll go scout it out—”

“Sit your ass down, Stark,” Quill commanded, and he geared the ship toward the spot indicated. “No one’s going off on their own, okay?”

Tony smirked over his shoulder at their captain. “I thought you wanted me out of your hair.”

Quill shrugged. “Thanks,” he added with a very loud clearing of his throat, as if in attempts to hide it. “For… for jumping in and everything.”

“We’re a crew,” Tony said easily.

+++

The clearing they had landed in was almost exactly the dimensions of the ship, nestled in amongst trees that didn’t look so different from some of the coniferous trees of Earth. Whether it was from the storm clouds or from the time of day, it was almost completely dark outside the influence of the ship’s floodlights, which illuminated only the closest of the nearby trees. They all stood in the loading bay, the ramp lowered into the mud but the entire crew still bundled up away from the rain hammering down around them. Quill held out his scanner, shaking it now and then and tapping the interface.

“Also busted?” Tony asked, leaning over.

Quill snatched the device out of Tony’s sight, grumbling to himself. “Must be some kind of weirdness with the atmosphere or something,” Quill finally managed to say.

“Stephen?” Tony laid a hand on Stephen’s shoulder, squeezed just slightly.

Stephen flexed the fingers on one of his hands, gazing up at the clouds overhead. He could have very easily used the same spell to get a quick read on the atmosphere, the make-up of the planet, likely even any sign of nearby life; all without expending too much of his own energy. But there was something that lingered in the back of his mind like a bad smell—that he should keep his spell-use to a minimum, at least until he had some better idea of who or what had placed that anomaly there in the first place. No need to draw undue attention until it was absolutely necessary.

Luckily, he didn’t have to make his excuses just yet.

“Hail and well-met!” came a voice from amongst the trees.

Two blasters, a sword, a charged repulsor, and a shield met the owner of that voice in a flash. 

“We mean you no harm!” came the overly-jovial reply to their weaponized caution. “We are going to approach, now. We are unarmed, this I swear to you!”

“Hands up, whoever you are!” Quill warned, both of his blasters held at arm's length in their direction.

As bidden, two figures emerged from the tree line with arms held over their heads. One, a young woman, and another a tall man—both blonde with braids in their hair, dressed in finery that had most definitely seen better days. Despite their mostly-ragged appearances, their faces were calm and kind.

“We bid you welcome,” the young woman said, smiling softly. Though the rain pelted her, she didn’t appear fazed. “You’ve been awaited.”

“Uh,” Quill began, eyes darting from Tony to Stephen. Tony gestured to the new arrivals, eyebrows high on his forehead as he gestured for Quill to take the initiative. “Right, okay. Awaited by who?” Quill asked, straightening his back to look more important (more put-together).

“By the most generous and kind Prince Loki, of course,” the man answered brightly, smiling with all of his teeth.


	11. audience

The man and the woman—Asgardian refugees who called themselves Erlend and Runa, brother and sister—led the crew through the dark woods and the cold rain. Quill followed directly behind them, his hand hovering over the blaster at his side, and Mantis clinging to his other arm. The cloak hovered over Stephen and Tony, keeping their heads dry. Nebula took up the rear, her head turning at every noise.

“We thought all hope lost,” Runa told them, her head turned only slightly toward them. “When we few survivors of Thanos’ attack made planetfall here, our ship was nearly destroyed in the landing.”

“Our ability to send distress signals was limited, with the atmosphere and our ruined equipment,” Erlend added. “But our luck survived the crash. Prince Loki, who we thought dead at Thanos’ hands, came to our rescue.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the _rescuing_ kind,” Tony growled near Stephen’s ear.

“I once thought the same as you do,” Runa said with a sigh. “It was Loki that sent the Jotun attack on Asgard, and Loki that exiled Odin and ruled in his place through trickery. But he is changed, Midgardian. I know this beyond all doubt.”

“With his great power, it was he who set the Convergence in motion that brought you here,” Erlend said, his full smile beaming through the rain. “And it will bring us home.”

“Asgard was destroyed,” Stephen said, sliding his eyes sideways at his companions. “Every sorcerer on Earth felt it. There’s no going back to that.”

Runa chuckled, her eyes shining. “You will see,” was all she said.

Soon, a shape loomed out of the shadows of the forest, towering over all of them. It was the crash site of the Asgardian escape vessel. The impact hadn’t completely crippled the ship, but to Stephen it seemed unsalvageable. Quill gave a low whistle, hand to his eyes to shield them from rain to take in the wreckage.

“Everyone survived that?” he asked, still following their guides.

“It was fortuitous that this planet is as rain-soaked as it is,” Runa mused, and she waved them to the far side of the ship. The crash had brought it close to the side of a rocky cliff, and set into that rockface was a roughly-hewn door made of stone. Very old, but very sturdy. “And fortuitous that we were not the first people to this planet. We have made camp in these catacombs. Home, for now.”

“A little _too_ fortuitous,” Nebula grumbled, coming up to Quill’s side. “Do you believe their story?”

“Well, it sure as hell looks like they crashed here,” Quill murmured, ducked his head low in secrecy. “I know Thor said half the Asgardians got away, but this is _stupid_ far away from where we found the busted-up ship Thanos blew up.”

“You said Loki knew we were coming,” Stephen said, ticking his eyes up and away from the wreckage to the brother and sister by the stone door. “How? As far as I know, he’s never possessed precognition.”

“He can see through the doorway,” Erlend replied, and he and his sister leaned together into the door to open it for them. “The one that your ship entered through, and Thor’s before it.”

“Thor?” Mantis said eagerly, her antennae perking up in an instant. It was the first she had opened her mouth since landing. “Is he okay? Are Groot and the others—”

“Prince Loki will have all of your answers,” Runa told her, holding up a hand with a little smile. She gestured at the doorway and walked inside.

A dark hallway crawled into the hillside before them, lit intermittently with bulbs hanging from wire strung from the ship outside. The hall seemed to have been dug from the very rock, cool and slightly damp from the rain outside. The brother and sister beckoned them in, smiling calmly.

“Okay, no, that’s super creepy,” Quill said, shook his head and crossed his arms. “If we go in there, there’s gonna be some dude in a hockey mask around a corner, I know it.”

“I think I’m on Quill’s side for once,” Tony murmured (and Quill’s head snapped hard in his direction as if he’d been spalled by the suggestion that he and Tony might agree on something). “If the Wonder Twins are telling the truth, why the hell would I just walk into Loki’s creepy dungeon, anyway? We’re not looking for him, we’re looking for—”

“Stark!” came the boisterous cry from the hall before them, and before another moment had passed, an intimidating figure strode out from around the brother and sister and came barreling down the hall at them. With no further ado, Tony was swept up in a crushing pair of muscular arms.

“F—” Tony tried to say, only to wheeze through an empty syllable at the sudden loss of lung space. 

Thor finally set Tony back on his feet, clapped him thunderously on the shoulder with a full, sunshine smile on his broad face. “Quill brought you to rescue me, has he?”

Thor’s shining, mismatched eyes fell on Quill with a fondness that struck even Tony and Stephen standing in the light of it, and Quill faltered under it, as if unsure of what to do with the emotion.

“Guess it looks that way, huh?” Tony gasped through a renewed breath, wide eyes rolling until they found Stephen, pinned him with an incredulous, wild look.

“And Strange?” Thor asked, took a step backwards to take in the full visage of the sorcerer. “Not the duo I would have expected for a rescue mission.”

“We’re dating,” Stephen said simply, and he held out a hand. “It’s good to see you again, Thor. And safe.”

“You as well, wizard!” Thor said, sweeping Stephen’s hand up and shaking with a surprising gentleness. “Though unexpected, your arrival is most welcome. And please accept my congratulations on your courtship. Stark will make a decent husband.” 

He waved them forward, letting that ball drop between them into a resounding silence. A quick look of pale panic flashed from Stephen to Tony and rebounded back again.

Tony blinked, and he held an affronted hand to his chest, face buckling in insult. “ _Decent_?”

And with that, any tension that the strange, offhand comment had bred in him cleared as Stephen’s mouth bent into a smile, tight laughter shuddering through his chest. 

Mantis left the comforting shield that Quill had been providing, and she gladly replaced Tony in Thor’s arms—a warm and welcoming embrace. Quill stepped in, mouth still slightly agape at the god of thunder’s sudden appearance, and wobbled under the thunderous clap on his shoulder.

“It’s good to see you again, friends! I hope that my disappearance caused no detriment to our friendship,” Thor said with a happy, lopsided smile.

“Really? Decent?” Tony was still murmuring, face puckered in disbelief. “I’d expect _great_ or something a little more flattering.”

“Thor, buddy,” Quill cut in, a hand slicing between them to cut off the rest of the conversation. “Look, I’m glad you weren’t crushed to death in a black hole—”

“Crushed to death?” Thor laughed. “No, Quill, if it had indeed been a black hole, my existence simply would have been stretched into the infinite over a fraction of a second into a singularity.”

“ _But_ ,” Quill interrupted again, more harshly. “Where’s everyone else? We picked up a transmission from Groot and he sounded freaked the fuck out.”

Thor blinked oddly, stuck halfway through a smile and into confusion. “Groot? He’s doing well, he—” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, as if suddenly tired, and shook it off like a bad dream. “Loki will explain everything, Quill. Come, all of you, let me get you an audience.” He turned, an arm still holding Mantis against his side, and bade them to follow down the hall.

Something turned in Stephen’s stomach. He didn’t need to be a Master of the Mystic Arts to know that something was very wrong here. A series of extremely fortunate circumstances that brought the Asgardians safely to this planet, Loki (of all people) taking care of the refugees, Thor’s odd reticence. Something wasn’t adding up.

“An audience?” Tony murmured into Stephen’s ear as they followed. “It’s not just me that has a bad feeling about this, right?”

Stephen’s eyes ticked up and found Tony watching him. That man could read him so easily, by now. Knew when he wasn’t telling him everything, when he’d kept something buried. He made a small motion with his head toward Thor, and their pace slowed to fall behind by a few strides.

“Something reached out to me through the anomaly,” Stephen said just under his breath, just loud enough for Tony to hear. 

Tony frowned, his concerned gaze going soft as it ran over Stephen’s face. “It knocked you out.”

Stephen nodded. “Loki might be a skilled manipulator and keen with illusions, but I never felt that kind of power in him. Not enough to incapacitate a Master of the Mystic Arts.”

“You think there’s someone else behind this, and Loki’s just the frontman?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Stephen told him. “I’ll save my judgment until we get this _audience_.”

“This is the sleeping quarters,” Thor said to jar them from their conversation, with a wide-armed gesture at a doorway carved from the stone of the hall. “I’m afraid that room and board are in short supply. While Thanos managed to murder half of my people, still half of them are surviving here under Loki’s guidance.”

They passed by the open doorway, and Stephen could see several bed-like structures—most of them taken up by sleeping or wounded Asgardians, with others moving amongst them and tending to those wounds. And again, Stephen’s stomach turned at the mention of the god of mischief. He’d been in New York, all those years ago when Loki, under Thanos’ orders, had sent an army through a portal over Stark Tower—armed with the space stone _and_ the mind stone. Doctor Stephen Strange had watched aliens pour through that portal, and his life had utterly changed. Skeptic Stephen Strange had to deal with magic and aliens and the injuries that landed hundreds in his operating room that day.

Once he’d become a Master of the Mystic arts, however, Loki posed much less of a threat (especially with his brother nearby to watch him). He had seemed so much less threatening in person than over grainy news footage fighting the Avengers among the skyscrapers. Maybe the brother and sister that had brought them here were right, maybe he’d turned over some kind of leaf after losing so thoroughly in New York.

But that didn’t explain that malicious searching he’d felt on the other side of the anomaly, the powerful siphon, the Convergence… 

He hadn’t realized that Thor had left them until he’d reemerged from a wide set of double doors, their iron handles rusted from the ages.

“I’ve spoken with Loki. He wants to speak to Strange,” Thor said, his smile tilting into and edge of worry that didn’t reach his eyes. “Everyone else, come with me and I’ll get you settled in.”

Tony and Quill started arguing at the same time.

“No, hold on!” Quill burst out. “You said he’d tell us about Groot and Rocket and Drax!”

“You’re not going in there by yourself!” Tony snapped, this one directed at Stephen.

The sorcerer made the smallest move to place himself between Tony and the now-arguing parties of Quill and Thor, blocking out their conversation enough to have their own.

“You don’t think I can handle myself against a god?” Stephen asked, sarcasm brushing at the corners of his mouth.

“I didn’t say that,” Tony cut in quickly. “I mean, this is the asshole that attacked New York, that _killed_ Coulson, that sucked us into this spacehole! I’m not letting you—”

“You’re not _letting_ me?”

“Okay, that sounded douchey, but you know what I mean,” Tony persisted.

“You’re the one that said I was _stupidly powerful_ ,” Stephen recalled, eyes ticking up in false agonizing deliberation. Tony rolled his eyes hard in response.

“God, you’re stubborn.”

“Hi pot, I’m kettle,” Stephen murmured, and he pressed a warm kiss to Tony’s temple. “Keep an eye on Peter, he likes you more than he says he does.”

Tony burst into a single loud laugh, catching everyone else’s attention. He cleared his throat, and he laid a hand on Stephen’s chest.

“Don’t boss me around,” he said quietly. “I’m serious about Loki. Don’t trust a thing out of that asshole’s mouth.”

Stephen nodded, let his fingers rest just briefly over Tony’s on his chest, and then he swept away to the stone door. Behind him, Tony joined the others as a peacekeeper, a voice of reason. Stephen leaned into the stone door, opened it just enough to enter, and closed it behind him.

The chamber was deep and wide, the ambient dripping noise louder here than in the corridor. What lights they had managed to string up from the ship barely managed to light the room, casting hard shadows into the corners. The rough form of the room took shape as Stephen stepped into it, shuddering from the underground chill. Half-rotten wooden furniture adorned one side, perhaps a large dining table at some point in its history. An empty hearth, whistling from the outside wind and dripping with cold rain. And somewhere near the center, adorned with a pair of standing braizures lit with dim flames, was a chair sat just slightly higher than anything else in the room. A place of surveillance, of superiority. And in that stone-hewn seat was the god of mischief himself.

Loki was certainly not as well put-together as the last time Stephen had seen him. His sallow face was even more pale than usual, with dark circles under his eyes speaking of sleeplessness or sickness. His lank hair hung around his shoulders, and a crown of curving, golden horns adorned his head. His cool gaze rose when Stephen entered the room, and gave him the time to observe his surroundings before he spoke.

“Your arrival is fortuitous, wizard,” Loki said, his silver voice rougher than usual.

“So I’ve heard,” Stephen replied. He stepped over the rough stonework of the floor between them, cracked from what appeared to be centuries of decay. “You wanted to separate me from the others. Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Loki asked with a laborious grin, straightening his back. “We’re equals, Strange. The others can be helpful, at best, but we understand one another far better than the brutes on the other side of that door.”

“They say the gift of a silver tongue is the mark of a great leader. And a liar,” Stephen added, shrugging his shoulders. “Flattery will get you literally nowhere.”

“Then enlighten me, Strange,” Loki said, waving a hand at his side. “Why bother meeting me this way, if you thought it to be a trap?”

Stephen’s mouth pulled into a hard, wan smile. “Because you’re not Loki.”

The amused smirk on Loki’s face didn’t falter, but there was a darker look that took up a seat in his eyes. “Am I not? My own brother knows me.”

“The illusion is great, don’t get me wrong,” Stephen drawled, waved a hand lazily at Loki. “And Loki’s sorcery certainly had its merits. I only knew him for a short time, myself, but I knew enough about him to be _absolutely sure_ that he never possessed enough power to single-handedly conjure an artificial Convergence. So,” he said more sharply—darker, heavier. “Are you going to drop the act yourself, or do you need some help?”

He raised his hands, fingers already aligned in arcane configurations.

And bright green threads of light sprung from the ground, seized Stephen’s arms and pinned them hard to his side. He uttered a strangled grunt, fought the bonds for just a moment before they snaked up around his neck and head—yanked his head to face straight forward, despite his protestations.

Loki removed his horned crown, ran a hand through slick hair, and stood. He shook his head, hands held behind his back as he strode slowly across the room.

“Stephen Strange,” Loki said through a grin. 

“Doctor,” Stephen spat.

“Doctor,” Loki chuckled, circled around Stephen’s trapped form. “Among so many other accolades and distinctions. I saw you, Doctor Strange, when you peered through that hole I made in space.”

When thin fingers tipped Stephen’s head up by the chin, they were no longer Loki’s. They were a woman’s hands. The illusion was gone, and Stephen was left staring into shockingly green eyes. Curtains of blonde hair framed her strong face, where a hard smirk was locked to her lips.

“Did you see _me_?” she asked.

There was magic in that voice. He would have to be a dullard not to sense it, not to feel the spell trying to wrap itself around his brain just as her bonds had wrapped around his body. He fought it off with a slate grin to match hers.

“So, it’s not just the illusion,” he croaked around the tightening of her constricting bands. “Some kind of mind control, too.”

She dropped her hand away, tapped those fingers to her lips in thought. “Not as susceptible as dear Thor, it seems,” she said with a shallow chuckle. “It was insultingly simple, by the way. All he wants in this life is his family, and I provided him that. Am I not kind?”

“I don’t think it’s the word I would have picked,” Stephen answered the rhetorical question, and it bought him even tighter bonds for his trouble.

“Listen closely, Doctor Strange,” the woman purred, coming even closer. “You may be clever, and you may have the ability to see through my illusions, but cast no aspersions on your luck. You were at my whim when I broke your spell. You are at my whim now. I could end your lucky life in a moment, if I chose. You will _not_ impede my work, and you will _not_ dissuade me from my course. You and your friends will work with me, or I will kill every last one of you.”

Stephen swallowed a breath, and he didn’t blink. 

“You won’t,” he managed.

A thin finger snapped out, pressed under his chin and tilted him harshly up to face her. “Do not presume—”

“You saw me,” Stephen interrupted her, managed to wrench his jaw from under her control. “You saw what I can do. You’re siphoning raw energy from the surrounding planes in order to summon the power you need for whatever you’re planning to do with this Convergence. You need me, or I’d be dead already.”

She didn’t smile, but she didn’t lash out at him again. Her bright eyes flicked to take him in, as if only now making a true assessment. She made no acknowledgement of his assumption, but she did take one step away from their intimate proximity.

“You have incredible comprehension of sorcery, for a human,” she admitted, one hand on her hip as a smile curled onto her lips (a look that may have been sweet or coy on someone else, but not on her). “You’re right, Doctor Strange. I saw you and I saw your power. I saw what you are _truly_ capable of. And I can admit, I was impressed.”

Stephen uttered a strangled half laugh, rolled his eyes. “Oh please, save your words for someone who you can manipulate. Talk straight, and maybe we can start talking about an agreement. Maybe start with a name?”

Strangely, the smile grew on her pretty lips. 

“My name is Amora, sorcerer. Amora the Enchantress. And you _will_ help me, in the end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this twist might burst some bubbles. Also, I am definitely not gonna win NaNo this year, I'm stupidly behind. Also also, first time writing Thor! Lemme know if it's insultingly bad! And my portrayal of Amora is based mostly on the Avenger Assemble cartoon, since (again) I've not really managed to read many comics. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading! You guys are the best!


	12. truce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back, y'all! December was a very weird month for me, personally. A lot of things that could have gone wrong did, but things are looking much better in the new year, even though it took most of January for me to get back on the fanfiction horse. But here we are! This chapter may be a bit shorter for the lack of practice, hope it's okay for now! I also hope I didn't lose all my readers in the downtime lol. 
> 
> For those still reading, thank you so much for your patience, and I hope it pays off. Stay awesome!!

Tony paced the wall near the open doorway, the sound of voices mingling against the low ceiling as the Guardians argued somewhere behind him. 

“I thought we were friends!” Quill shouted, nearly standing on his toes (still not quite enough to meet the god of thunder in the eye). His finger a fraction away from prodding the Asgardian in the chest.

“We are,” Thor replied, his square face fracturing into offended sadness. “Quill, what have I done to bring this mood upon you?”

“Oh ho _ho_ ,” Quill laughed with his entire chest, and he slammed a hand into the air with a single finger extended. “ _One,_ you disappear with half my crew into the swirling spacehole of doom. _Two_.” He stabbed out with a second finger. “You’ve just been chilling down on this super-soaked planet with your super-creepy brother instead of trying to let us know—I don’t know—that you’re okay?! _Three_ , you still won’t tell me where Groot is and why we got that message from him!”

Thor blinked, thrown, as if Quill’s assault had been physical rather than verbal.

“I had no idea my behavior affected you so,” Thor said. 

“Y-yeah,” Quill continued, his composure thrown almost as hard. “And… and another thing!”

Thor nodded, as if asking for the next point with bated breath.

“Another thing is I really don’t like how creepy _you’re_ being right now,” Quill thundered on, gathering himself with a long breath that puffed him up in the chest, making him just slightly taller.

“Creepy? I don’t understand,” Thor murmured, looking just momentarily at Tony. 

“You _are_ a little different, buddy,” Tony supplied, arms crossed as he shifted his weight in thought. “I don’t wanna say sycophantic, but—”

“Whatever that means,” Quill cut in dismissively, “he means you’re being uptight and weird and I wanna see Groot _right now_.”

“Of course,” Thor said, his tone still suspended in wounded disbelief. He held a hand to his head (the second time since they’d reunited, Tony noticed) as if struck by a flyby headache. “Of course, I—”

The door opened, and Tony whirled on the spot, mouth already open and questions on his tongue. But it wasn’t Stephen standing in the doorway. He’d know that greasy outline anywhere. That lank, looming shadow and the white grin that came with it.

Tony very calmly pushed the thoughts of New York out of his head, struggled to keep the effort from pinching his face into a scowl.

“Stark,” Loki breathed through his teeth. Tension was palpable even on Loki’s cool face, even past the persistent, forced smile. He broke into a more welcoming expression, spread his arms to his sides in a broad gesture. “So… _interesting_ to see you here. Welcome to—”

“Where’s Stephen?” Tony cut in, standing as tall and as intimidating as he could. His tone couldn’t possibly have been more icy.

Loki clapped his hands together, rubbed them as though eager. “It’s a good thing that your friends arrived when they did, brother,” he said. Thor’s head popped up from where he stood with the rest of the Guardians—Quill silently fuming beside him at the continuing interruptions. “The wizard is occupied with examining the spell that brought you here. I’ll be glad of his expertise.”

Tony narrowed his eyes, mouth half open. His gaze darted to Thor, who stepped in beside Loki and wrangled an arm around his brother’s shoulder and squeezed.

“What did I tell you, Stark? Loki has changed, and for the better. He’s even made a promise _not_ to invade Midgard again,” he added with a finger pointed into the air to accentuate just how momentous the promise was.

“Yeah, not exactly ready and willing to take him on his word,” Tony growled. His chest rose sharply with a stinging breath, which he held for just one tense moment before he launched back in. “Listen. God of Assholes,” he managed through his teeth (Quill hissing appreciatively at the burn). “I don’t care whatever new leaf you found and decided to turn over. There’s no way in hell—or whatever your wacky Fantasy Hell is—that I’m getting over the fact you _invaded_ Earth and tried to kill me and my friends. Six years and some change isn’t enough to forgive murder and _literal war_. Not in my book.”

He found himself out of breath, chest shaking just slightly from the effort of facing Loki for the first time since the Avengers’ first mission. The only reason they’d even assembled in the first place was Loki—and, lurking behind him, Thanos (long before they’d had even an inkling of what the Infinity Stones were and how they would change their lives and the universe around them).

“I don’t expect forgiveness, Stark,” Loki said calmly, though his hands clasped hard behind him. “If you’ve noticed, I haven’t asked for it. But perhaps a truce is in order regardless, considering the circumstances.”

“My ass,” Tony barked. “I’ve got a working ship and you don’t. We’d haul ourselves outta here right now if we didn’t come for Thor and the rest. I’ve got Earth’s Mightiest Wizard and a few _supremely_ pissed off aliens on my side, so I’d say you don’t have a fucking leg to stand on. Tell me where Groot and the others are _right now_ , or it’s gonna get ugly.”

Quill held his hand out for a high-five, and Tony supplied it without tearing his eyes away from the biggest threat in the room.

Thor’s chest swelled up indignantly with a retort, presumably in his brother’s defense, but Loki held up one of his hands to quell that effort. Thor blinked, and remained silent.

“I understand that you’re angry,” Loki murmured. Tony felt his throat go tight with unexpected and unplanned emotion. His eyes watered almost instantly, and it took some effort to reign whatever had happened back into his chest. Strangely, Loki’s face contorted just briefly into a frown, which disappeared just as quickly. “But we aren’t enemies here, Stark. I’ll show you to your Guardians, if you’ll give me the good faith to follow me without stabbing me in the back.”

Tony faltered, and that was all the room that Loki needed to maneuver into. He took Tony’s hand and he shook once, firmly, and dropped him just as quickly. Tony wasn’t sure if he was meant to feel the tell-tale crackle of magical energy in that handshake, but there was no way he could have missed it.

“A truce it is. And if you and your friends would come this way,” Loki finished, motioning once for the door before he turned on the spot and left through it. Thor enthusiastically followed in his wake, looking altogether eerily similar to a golden retriever.

Tony and Quill met each other’s eyes with matching incredulity.

“Okay, so,” Quill murmured, stepping fully up to Tony’s side. “This guy invaded Earth?”

Mantis’ careful hand on Tony’s shoulder was light, and her voice even lighter. “The one that brought the army for Thanos.”

For just a moment, looking into her wide eyes, Tony swore that he could see his own memories reflected there, shining in the comforting blackness of her eyes. Her own reassurance flooded back at him, scared out the darkness of empty space (the permeating cold that froze his bones, staring up into the face of the invading army, nuke in his hands; the close bodies of the Guardians and Stephen around him, not-coffee held in both of his hands as they listened to him spill his guts) and filled him with a new and sunshine hope.

“Yep,” Tony uttered through a shaking sigh. Clapped an encouraging hand over Mantis’, which put a growing smile on her face.

He felt another hand land heavy on his opposite shoulder, and turned to find that it was Quill’s. Steady and firm opposing Mantis’ soft comfort.

“Fuck that guy,” Quill said clearly, nodding once. “But let’s go.”

Tony agreed with a single nod, and felt Mantis latch even tighter to his arm. Turned to find her and Nebula in the side of his vision. The latter set her jaw tight enough to crush stone between her teeth as she met his gaze.

“And if he doesn’t prove Groot’s safety?” Nebula asked, her dark eyes flicking to her captain and one hand on the hilt of her short sword.

“Uh, we kill him,” Quill said very plainly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the galaxy. “And then we find Groot and the others ourselves, get everyone on the ship, and take these freeloaders back to Earth.” He indicated Tony with a nod and a cheeky wink. 

A welcome laugh bubbled out of Tony’s chest, and it echoed as the crew followed Loki and Thor into the dim hallway.

Tony snapped sunglasses from his pocket onto his face as surreptitiously as he probably could. “FRIDAY, you with me?”

“Always, Boss,” her voice answered from the node he’d installed in the glasses.

“Play me that recording of Stephen’s scanning spell again.”

In one lens of the glasses, the footage he’d asked for played over one half of his vision. The other was filled with Quill and Nebula, walking closely together and speaking in hushed tones that Tony couldn’t hear, their eyes on the figures of Thor and Loki ahead of them. Mantis, still with an arm looped through his, blinked oddly up at him.

“You are troubled. Speak,” she prompted, cocking her head at him.

Tony pressed his lips together in thought, and after a long moment, did as he was told. “Loki cast a spell on me, I think. Or tried to. I don’t think he knows I’m an amateur sorcerer on the side, probably didn’t expect me to be able to sense it, or something. There’s more up this asshole’s sleeve than usual, and I’m gonna find out what it is.”

Determination overtook her face, and she nodded grimly (which looked almost comical on her usually happy features). “His sleeves will not escape our investigation.”

Tony chuckled, which lit up her antennae with shared mirth. He settled his hands into the configuration shown on the recording and began explaining the spell to Mantis in overly-quiet tones whose echos whispered back meaninglessly at them in the ancient corridor.

+++

Stephen took a long breath, focused, and exhaled. Took stock of the situation as well as he could, as well as his remaining faculties allowed him.

Both hands bound, separately. Naturally, she would want to keep him from using any spells of his own. One glance affirmed that the bonds were the same spell Amora had used on him during their audience. Tight, but not painful. Utterly unbreakable, in his current state.

That current state being held to the wall of his hewn-stone cell like a skeleton in chains from a Saturday morning cartoon. He’d found himself trussed-up as such several minutes ago, with no recollection of how he’d come to be in the cell, how long he’d been there, or even where the cell was in relation to Tony and the others.

_Tony_. The thought hit him with enough concern and that it welled up in his throat, even if just for a moment. Tony could take care of himself, he tried to reason. He had Quill and the few Guardians they had left to look after him. He was Iron Man; he was Earth’s best defender. He didn’t need Stephen to back him up. He’d done quite well enough on his own before they’d met, he could handle a couple gods for a few hours.

Tony didn’t need protection from a sorcerer that let himself get captured _minutes_ after meeting the enemy. 

Another throb of pain struck him, and this one had nothing to do with worrying about his boyfriend. It hit deep in his chest, as if a hand had taken his lungs and squeezed. Eyes pinched closed; took a long breath, focused, and exhaled again. He felt drained, heavy, worn suddenly thin. After a moment, it was gone, and he was left reeling in the darkness again. Somehow both empty and burdened.

“Alright,” he breathed out loud, eyes still clamped shut. “She’s somehow using the energy from me—from the people she’s brought here—as well as the surrounding planes.” But his head shook almost involuntarily, brows cramming down his forehead in thought. “No, not quite. Something more than a simple siphon. Even all of the energy from the lives of all the Asgardians here wouldn’t amount to anything nearly as significant as what she’s pulling from the anomaly. So what _is_ she using me for?” 

Stephen shook with weak laughter, head hung low, chin to his chest. 

“I’m talking to myself,” he chuckled around an odd smirk. “Too much time with Tony.”

“Er, hi there.”

The voice, oddly accented and strangely chipper, was enough to bring Stephen from his reverie. Snapped his head up, opened his eyes. With his eyes adjusted to the near-darkness, Stephen suddenly saw that he wasn’t alone. There were two creatures in the cell across from his, similarly restrained by Amora’s green bounds of light. That dull green light illuminated the oddly animated face of what appeared to be a man made of stone.

“I’m Korg,” the rock man said with an upbeat tone. “And this is Miek,” he added, managing to nod to the small, slug-like creature restrained by him. “And we couldn’t help but notice that we’re just as captured as you are.”

Stephen blinked. 

“Hi,” was all he could find to reply.


	13. one hell of a play

The noise met them before they even entered the room. Tony and the remaining Guardians had followed Loki and Thor down a nearly empty hall (accosted once by a pair of very young Asgardians, grinning and bouncing at the sight of their leaders despite the weary, hungry looks on their faces) and further down a set of winding stone steps. The lights were more sparse here, and a thought meandered through Tony’s head that he should conjure a light for them. But he hesitated, his eyes on the back of Loki’s head. If he could keep it from the god of mischief that he was an amateur sorcerer, he’d have at least that leg up, should push come to proverbial shove.

The noise was the growing sound of laughter—one thin and tinny, the other full-lunged and boisterous. 

Quill pushed past Thor and Loki, and even from the distance, Tony could see the excited tremors in Quill’s arms. Tony caught Mantis’ eye, and her smile hit him almost as hard as a summertime sunbeam across his face. 

“They’re alive,” she whispered, tears gathering in her eyes. Her grip left Tony’s arm, and she ran after Quill, breezing by the pair of Asgardians. 

Tony caught up to Nebula and followed, doing his best not to glare at Loki as he passed. Followed Mantis, who followed Quill, into an open door at the end of the stairs.

“Woah, woah!” came the screeching voice that Tony recognized as Rocket’s—even from their brief interaction on Earth after the Infinity Stones incident, Tony couldn’t forget a face like that. “Back off, Quill! What the hell are you doing? Put me _down_!”

“Drax!” Mantis cried joyfully, just as Tony rounded the corner into the room.

Quill had grabbed the raccoon in his arms, squeezing him in a hard embrace (Rocket had freed one of his hands and was using it to shove into Quill’s nearest cheek, trying to push him away). And Mantis had thrown herself into Drax’s huge arms, much to his amusement.

“Did you think I was dead?” Drax asked Mantis, throwing his head back and laughing with his entire chest at the mere thought of being killed by the anomaly.

“All right, all right already!” Rocket groused over a bright bout of laughter, now with his second arm free as he tried wriggling out of Quill’s grasp. “We get it! _I_ get it! Enough with the saccharine sappy sh—”

He stilled at Tony’s laugh. Both Rocket and Quill frozen in place at the shock of being caught in a display of affection. Quill dropped Rocket, who landed on all fours and brusquely brushed himself off. Quill hid his red face by loudly clearing his throat.

“Stark,” Rocket grumbled, adjusting the fur around his ears. “What the hell are _you_ doing here? We aren’t picking up hitchhikers again, are we?” He directed the last to Quill, and took another double-take. “Stark _and_ Nebula?”

Nebula’s gaze dropped, hit the floor and stayed there. “He had no navigator,” she said, her lip curled in disdain.

“No shit,” Rocket laughed and crossed his arms. “What with us being stuck on this literal backwater backwash planet with all of Thor’s stinkin’ relatives for who knows _how_ long—”

“Where’s Groot?” Tony asked.

The anticipatory silence in the room was as hard as rock. 

“Where’s Groot?” Rocket repeated, brow deepening. “What d’you mean, where’s Groot? He’s right freakin’ there.”

“I am Groot,” came the reply. 

Four heads turned on a swivel—Tony, Quill, Mantis and Nebula all whipped around in nearly the same movement to stare at the source of the voice. Young Groot, arms crossed and sitting moodily on the only available bed.

“And now,” came Loki’s voice from behind them, “I will _gladly_ accept your apology, Stark.”

+++

Stephen turned his head as much as he could, until the collar of the cloak was in the edge of his vision. It perked interestedly at his attention.

“Can you move?” he asked, voice low.

With little effort, the cloak lifted off of his shoulders and wriggled free from its position pinched between Stephen and the wall. It fluttered about for a moment before settling to hover inquisitively in front of him, its collar cocked like a dog that had just heard its name.

“I need you to stay with Tony,” Stephen instructed. “And don’t be shifty about it, please,” he added miserably, a long-suffering look in his eye. “He’s probably already on edge. If you can somehow manage to be discreet, please do.”

The cloak shifted itself indignantly as though straightening its spine, but still nodded stiffly before flitting away into the darkness. Stephen sighed, his head lolling forward.

“That’s neat,” Korg said from his cell, and Stephen could just catch a smile on his face in the dim light of their bonds. “Didn’t really need to send your cape off to get help, though. I’m already formulating an intricate plan of escape and revolution.”

“It’s not a—” Stephen cut himself off, decided it wasn’t worth the effort of argument. “So, how did you get here?” 

“Well,” Korg said, looking up as he thought. “Once we were shoved into an escape pod and that Thanos blew up our other ship, we ended up here with what I guess is the last of Asgard. And Miek saw right through that weird lady’s hologram or whatever it was she was using to pretend to be Thor’s brother.”

“You were on the ship with Thor?”

“Me and Miek and a few other revolutioneers from Sakaar helped liberate the people of Asgard,” Korg said importantly. “And now we’ll liberate them again. From someone else. After liberating ourselves, of course. And if you weren’t so secretive, I’d probably be alright with liberating you, too.”

It took Stephen a moment to decide exactly what Korg had meant, and then took a breath and supplied: “Doctor Strange.”

“Well, I’d shake your hand if it wasn’t chained to a dungeon wall, Doctor Strange,” Korg said, still chipper.

“You’re awfully optimistic for someone who’s been down here longer than I have,” Stephen murmured.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Korg mused, his eyes looking about in something akin to bemusement. “Not forced to kill anyone, no torture, smells okay. If I weren’t tied up, I’d probably like it. But I am. So, I don’t.” 

“Why hasn’t her charm spell worked on the both of you?” Stephen asked.

“Because I’m made of rocks?” Korg posited, looking thoughtful. “Dunno, to be honest. Maybe she’s not my type?”

Miek replied with a series of clicks, and a growl. Even Stephen managed a chuckle.

Stephen blinked, and he suddenly found his vision taken up by Amora’s green eyes. He didn’t jump, but his surprise must have shown somewhere on his face, by the amused smirk that popped onto her lips.

“How are the accomodations, Strange?” she asked, her tone light, haughty.

“I save my banter for more interesting conversationalists,” Stephen mused under his breath, still loud enough for her to hear. He savored the way it turned her mouth down at the corners, even when she tightened his bonds with a wave of her hand. “I think I’ve figured out your play,” he added, grinning through his teeth.

“You know nothing of our affairs, Midgardian,” she hissed.

“I know that Asgard was destroyed,” Stephen amended, tilting his head back to look down his nose at her. “And I know that you weren’t on Thor’s ship with the rest of the refugees. He would’ve mentioned you,” he added as she opened her mouth to argue.

“Yeah, she wasn’t,” Korg stated plainly from the opposite cell.

Amora whirled on the spot, waved her hand and tightened the strings of light around Korg’s wrists. The sound of crumbling rock, of pebble-sized chunks of him plinking against the stone floor, hit Stephen awkwardly in the stomach.

“Um,” Korg murmured, looking awkwardly from wrist to bound wrist. “It’s supposed to be hurting me, right? That’s what this is about?”

“So, you were off Asgard by the time it was destroyed,” Stephen said evenly, brought her attention back to him. “Exiled, probably.”

She huffed at him, and with a shake of her head, had regained her aloof dignity. “And what else have you deduced?”

“You’re using me,” he sighed (flexed his fingers to get more feeling into them; he was weaker, he could tell just from the hour or so he’d been down here). “And whoever else you have tied up like this. You’re casting big magic, and you need all the help you can get.”

She allowed the tiniest puff of laughter. “Big magic? Is this some foolishly simple Midgardian phrase?”

“Bigger than the load all but a few single sorcerers can handle,” he clarified (maybe a bit too smugly). He relished the way her mouth turned down; oh, she did _not_ like being explained to. “Sorcerers on Earth have been known to spread the share of energy that one by themselves couldn’t handle. And I take it the artificial Convergence that brought us here is taking it out on you more than you’d like to admit. Your Loki impression really lacks a jump in its step.”

“You—” she bit in, but Stephen barreled through (no regard for propriety or safety, as usual).

“You could be using Thor like a literal battery, but you’re not. You’re using him to keep the Asgardians placated. You could have _everyone_ tied into your spell, sharing the load.”

“You’re right, I could,” Amora all but snarled, coming in altogether too close to Stephen’s face. “Including,” she added, touching her finger to Stephen’s chin, tilting his gaze up to hers and glaring.

In an instant, Stephen’s eye was assaulted by visions. Quill trussed up in bonds, struggling and cursing until his voice was hoarse. Mantis weeping, her face wet with too many tears. Tony screaming at the top of his lungs, over and over and over—

“Okay!” Stephen shouted over the noise in his head. Caught his breath awkwardly, his chest horribly tight. 

The camera-flash visions mingled like muddy water with memories of Titan, of the terrible noise of the blade plunging between Tony’s ribs (the vivid, shocking red of blood on Tony’s lips, and now with the gut-tightening soundtrack Amora’s vision had fixed into his brain on a loop, screaming over and over and…), millions upon millions of Tony Stark’s corpses piling up in his mind’s eye at her command.

“You made your point,” Stephen snapped, voice wet with more emotion than he’d intended to display. He swallowed it down, ignored the self-satisfied look on her face. 

“You think your power is great, but with one touch, I see through you, Strange,” she laughed, tainted by a snarl. “You cast yourself as the noble hero, whose purpose is more important than the lives of those you profess to love. But it’s an _utter farce_. You have the most pliant heart I’ve ever seen into, sorcerer. You would bend knee to gods or demons to save your family, the home you’ve built.”

With those words, it finally hit him. Home. Not his, not Tony’s. _Hers_.

“Asgard,” he murmured, eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to _tunnel through dimensions_ to Asgard using an artificial Convergence.” He breathed through a laugh. “Amazing.”

Unexpectedly, a proud smile bloomed on her face, and if Stephen had put up less of a resistance to her charming spells, he just might have been struck by it.

“No—it’s really, incredibly stupid,” Stephen corrected flippantly. “But the execution is brilliant.”

Amora’s mouth dropped open. And for one moment, she had nothing to say. But the storm gathered more strength behind her tongue, her pale face for once showing the color of emotion, red around the ears and fuming.

“I’m going home!” she cried, “Asgard is _my_ home as much as it is theirs!” 

“ _Was_ ,” Stephen barked in reply.

Her hand was already raised, poised like she was going to strike him across the face. It took her the space of a moment to decide, but she didn’t hit him. Instead, she clenched her fist and pulled the bonds tighter around his wrists (more of them snaking from between the bricks and writhing around his arms, his ankles, his neck—pulling taut in her anger).

There were tears in her eyes. Not enough to spill over, but enough to notice. A misty haze over her expression, the smallest trembling of her lip. She sucked in a harsh breath, brought herself back to her full, haughty height.

“The prophecy of Ragnarok is only that: a prophecy.” With every word, her own confidence grew. “If indeed Surtur enacted some vengeance on my home, there’s no precognition that says whether or not we may return some day. I _am_ going to Asgard, and will be welcomed back for my troubles.”

“As a savior,” Stephen managed around the tightening bonds. “Right.”

The surge of her spell hit him again, enough to leave him completely breathless for a span of seconds—Miek squealed in the cell across from his, and the muffled noise of Korg’s protests accompanied several more voices of discontent in the cells around them; people imprisoned that Stephen hadn’t yet seen or heard. Sharing the load of the spell that she was using in attempts to return to Asgard must have been even harder than Stephen had originally estimated.

“It’s one hell of a play to put on,” Stephen wheezed. “I hope it’s worth it.”

She didn’t even give him the dignity of a response. Just as quickly as she’d appeared before him, she was gone again, and his bonds loosened with her absence.

“You’re a little bit of a shit, aren’t you, Doctor Strange?” Korg asked, his wounded tone somehow still amused.

Stephen laughed, dropped his head and closed his eyes. “I’ve heard that.” Through a sigh, he smirked. “So, you’re formulating a plan?”

+++

“I don’t like it,” Tony muttered.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do to fix that, Boss,” FRIDAY chimed.

Loki had pulled his brother away once the Guardians had all begun to reminisce—once Quill had started to tell their heroic tale of rescue and shitty music. 

(Rocket interjected upon realizing that Stephen had also been a part of their rescue operation, “How many frickin’ people did you need to fly through a wormhole?” Quill ignored it completely.)

Quill and Mantis had both swept up to Groot’s side and tried to pull him into an embrace (or at least into the conversation), and both times the young tree had shied quickly away and pouted, croaking a beleaguered “I am Groot” to their concern and questions. If Tony could understand Groot, maybe it wouldn’t be as suspicious as he thought. But there was something off-putting about the whole situation that Tony didn’t like.

Especially when the cloak swept silently into the room and latched itself around Tony’s shoulders.

“Levi, what the—” Tony uttered, and lowered his voice when Rocket glanced up at the commotion. “Where’s Stephen? Is he okay?”

He waited for nearly a full second before pressing his face into his hand and grumbling: “I’m talking to the cloak. Spending too much time with Stephen. Okay, animate objects,” he began again, settling his shoulders with the slightest shimmy.

“Should I be offended?” FRIDAY asked.

“Something’s fishy. Groot wasn’t exactly social the one time we met, but he never said no to his friends. And Stephen’s MIA, but it wouldn’t be the first time. So we’re just gonna…” 

Tony splayed his fingers, and the spell fizzled again on his fingertips. He cursed, looked up to see if anyone had caught it. He tried again, copying exactly the gestures he’d seen Stephen use. And on his third attempt finally produced a glowing ring exactly similar to the one Stephen had used to examine the anomaly. He cut off an excited yip—just barely—and settled his shoulders into Serious Mode. Focused the ring on Groot, who still hadn’t moved from the cot and whose eyes were dull and downcast.

With a push, Tony expanded the ring into two, and runes etched themselves into the space between.

He was ready to ask FRIDAY to translate for him, halfway into a syllable before he realized that he didn’t need her help. He could understand the runes perfectly, somehow. He’d stared Stephen’s spell in the face and hadn’t understood a single stroke of it. But now, under his own hand, he could read it as easily as English.

As the spell listed off its readings, Tony felt his heart drop into his stomach. Groot had no pulse. No photosynthetic activity, no biorhythms whatsoever. But the energy radiating off of him was off the charts. He quickly moved the spell to focus on Quill, then on Nebula, before he jumped to any conclusions. But his suspicions were only confirmed when he did—he could perfectly read their heartbeats, their respiration, could see that they were _alive_.

“Well,” Tony breathed, misery already seeping into his bones, “shit.”

Tony held the spell firmly in one hand hand, strode across the room, and shoved his other hand right through Groot.

Like a fog, Groot disappeared without another word.

“What the—?!” Rocket yelled, everything in his body tensed and agitated.

“Oh, that is _messed up!_ ” Quill shouted, skittering backwards from the empty spot where the illusion of Groot had disappeared. “Stark! What’d you do?!”

Tony held the scanning spell in place. “That wasn’t Groot,” he said gravely. “Look, Loki’s good with illusions. I don’t know why, but that Groot was just a projection. Scanned it and everything,” he said, indicating the spell.

“No, no,” Quill groaned, grabbing his hair frantically in boths of his hands. “I just got you all back, I’m not going through this again!”

Tony held his free hand out in a motion to placate Quill’s shaking, hectic movement. “Stay with me, Quill. Okay, listen, this just means that transmission I picked up—”

Nebula’s hand landed hard on Quill’s shoulder. “The transmission was genuine,” she murmured. “He’s somewhere on the planet.”

“What’s going on?” Drax asked, his brow terribly furrowed. “Groot was fake all this time?”

“No—” Tony sighed dismally, ran his free hand down his face in exasperation. “No, just here, and just for a while. Quill—?”

“We’ll explain later, Drax,” Quill muttered (his eyes lingered on Nebula’s hand, which she hadn’t taken back yet; and he didn’t shrug her off). “I thought we were _done_ , and now you’re saying Groot’s still missing? Why would Loki need to make a Groot illusion, or whatever? And where the hell’s Stephen?”

Tony’s throat calcified, but he swallowed the obstruction and his gut reaction with just a moment’s thought. “We need to find Groot first. The wizard can handle himself until then.”

“And then we get the _hell_ off this planet,” Quill growled.

Rocket’s ears twitched in thought, stone silent and frowning. His eyes ticked up to meet Tony’s. “And how d’you suggest we do that, Stark?” He waved a paw at the scanning spell Tony was still managing to maintain. “Whatever that is—scanning hologram or something—you saw Groot wasn’t real. He was real when we all crash landed here in the pod. Between now and then, you’re saying someone switched out the real Groot with…” He rubbed his eyes wearily.

“Okay, Tony,” Quill cut in. Tony’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t say a word. “You’ve got that spell thingy. Loki’s probably gonna find out we ganked that fake Groot any time now, and he’s gonna be pissed when he gets here. So you gotta move fast, okay?”

“Me?” Tony blinked through his confusion.

“Yeah, you, Mantis, and Nebula,” Quill continued. 

“What?” Nebula snapped, her entire body going rigid.

“Look, I know you don’t like me,” Quill cut her off, pointed solidly at her. “But work with me _for once_ , okay?”

Nebula’s spine went somehow more stiff as she sucked in a hard breath, her eyes practically filled with fire. “I’m not leaving,” she insisted.

Quill puffed out an incredulous laugh. “ _What_?”

“You trusted Gamora to stand by your side!” she shouted, standing square and firm and absolutely not budging. “And she trusted you! She loved you! That makes you as good as my brother, and I am _not_ leaving!”

Quill blinked at her in open-mouthed silence, a surprised flush coloring his animated face. Nebula seemed to realize exactly what she’d said (and how much sentiment she’d openly admitted) and immediately froze.

Drax destroyed the sudden silence with a burst of boisterous laughter, holding his hands to his middle like it might explode. As a reaction, Mantis buckled into a smile, held a hand to her mouth to cover it and the accompanying happy titter.

“Holy shit,” Rocket murmured out of one side of his mouth.

“ _Smaller_ brother!” Nebula spat, her eyes darting away, fists clenching and unclenching. “Smaller and… and weak and useless without protection!” She scowled at the way Quill’s mouth was pulling up at the edges, amusement suddenly alight in his eyes. “Fine, I will go with Stark. Stop _looking at me_ ,” she hissed at last.

Quill’s mouth attempted to work several times before it actually did. “Okay. Okay, here’s the plan. Me, Drax, and Rocket ‘ll deal with whatever happens when Loki gets back down here to see what we did to Fake Groot. You, Mantis, and Nebula use your spell thing to find Real Groot. We figure out where Mister Wizard is, grab Thor, and run like hell.”

“I thought you didn’t do plans,” Tony said, sideways smile gracing his lips.

“Yeah, well,” Quill murmured. “Maybe I do sometimes.”

“Hey, what about you? Wanna get in on that action?” Tony asked the cloak. The collar shook firmly, and it clung even more tightly to Tony’s shoulders. He sighed. “Right. Stephen probably told you to protect me, or something. All right, team,” he said more loudly. “Let’s get moving. And Peter—” A fair exchange, a measure of new, burgeoning respect. Quill’s features bent in an odd show of vulnerability. “Kick his ass.”

Quill face blossomed into an eager grin, split in a bright laugh. He clapped Tony once on the shoulder, then chucked a thumb over his shoulder toward the exit. “Get the fuck outta here.”

“Got it, captain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god, this is super long. probably coulda split this with the last chapter but I am a glutton for punishment. I am going to overwhelm myself with characters someday...  
> First time ever writing for Rocket, Drax, etc, so please let me know if something sticks horribly out! there'll probably be somewhere around 3 more chapters, depending on how bogged down in details I get. how did this end up being the longest story in the series so far? again, thanks for sticking with me, you guys are awesome <3


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